Labour
by Rob Rimsill
Summary: Brockton Bay, 1988. The world has only recently realised the existence of people with miraculous powers – parahumans. Young dockworker Danny Hebert, on the other hand, is just trying to live his life. But when his friend is injured by one of these 'capes', Danny realises he might need to start paying more attention to this new world after all.
1. Chapter 1 - Strike

I really shouldn't have been at the picket line in the first place. I should have made the best of it, put my feet up at home, maybe gone out for a quiet drink with the rest of the lads. But no, Kurt wanted to go and demonstrate, and so along I went. Solidarity, I guess.

I mean, I was totally behind the strike. The Brockton Bay docks had made the city rich, and business was better than ever – for the fat cats that owned the shipping companies, the privileged few that could afford to buy the products we unloaded every day, the politicians that pointed to the city's wealth as a sign they were doing their jobs for once. But had any of it rolled downhill to benefit the men and women that busted their asses working to make it all possible? Hah.

No, I could see the point of reminding our white-collar bosses who was _actually_ responsible for Brockton's economic boom. Actually coming out to the picket line? Not so sure. But I'd known Kurt since we were both in middle school, and the man could get himself in trouble even while fast asleep. He was just too much of a hothead.

I guess he'd say I was the same when I was riled. He'd be right.

It was cold – January in Brockton, the price for getting to live in Brockton the rest of the year, hah – but not so cold I couldn't walk from my apartment to Lord's Port, where I worked. Would have worked, if not for the strike. Whatever. If we'd been further north, there might have been snow, which would at least have looked pretty, but all we got was… grey. It wasn't raining, though. No-one wanted to protest in the rain. Even so, I had a cheap jacket just in case.

Mind you, every item of clothing I had was cheap.

The streets around the docks weren't pretty at the best of times, all grey utilitarian offices and warehouses. Usually they'd be pretty lively, though – men and women hard at work loading and unloading, sailors wandering around looking for the bars, stuff like that. You know, a functional dock. Today, it was almost eerie.

The only sign of life as I made my way towards Lord's Port itself was a couple of squad cars parked at the side of the road. The officers inside were keeping themselves to themselves, but they were pointedly _there_. I ignored them as I passed, hands in pockets. The officers didn't move, but kept watching me all the way down the street.

Outside the gates to the actual docks, there was something of a crowd. The union hardliners, their buddies, a couple of old guys who'd shown up for solidarity. I nodded to the workers standing closest to me, their breath fogging up the January air from beneath thick scarves and thicker beards. They nodded back. We didn't smile. There was a tension in the air. No-one was saying all that much, just standing around in clusters and muttering. I could see why. I hadn't done anything wrong, but just by being here I felt like I was going to get in trouble.

A hand slapped my shoulder. "Danny!"

I turned. I don't know how Kurt Foster managed to sneak up on me, but he had. Kurt was _big_ – not just tall like I was, but huge and broad as well. He didn't work out or anything. This was just what doing a physical job ever since leaving school at sixteen did to a man.

Or at least to a man who was already big like Kurt. I only ever grew _upwards_ , and no matter what I did I never got any larger. To add to the 'teenager during a growth spurt' look, I still had to keep myself clean-shaven or else deal with straggly fluff. At twenty-one! Kurt, on the other hand, had a beard to rival the old hands at the gate, and his hand was big enough to cover almost my entire shoulder when he squeezed it again.

"It's great to see you, buddy! I know this isn't your thing, going and interacting with people and all-" I socked his shoulder, "but I'm grateful. It's really important that the folks in charge know they can't just expect us to-"

"I know," I interrupted, "I was there when the union rep gave his speech, same as you. You don't have to- oh God, you built a _sign_?" Yeah, on his shoulder was a board and a length of two-by-four hastily nailed together. He showed it to me.

 **WE DESERVE FAIR PAY**

"Catchy," I said.

Kurt coloured. "Yeah, I was never good with the slogans and all that. Showed it to the pigs on the way in," he gestured towards the police, "and they just sat there stony-faced. At least it's honest, huh?"

"Well, it is that."

Someone had set up a drum of firewood, which was burning merrily. By unspoken agreement, we both moved closer to it to try and warm up.

"Jeez," Kurt said after a while. "I didn't expect this to be so… grim, you know? I mean, I know it's a serious issue, but I thought it'd be a bit more merry. A couple of beers, a couple of songs, a bit of _life_."

"Yeah, well, maybe ten years ago," I said. "Nowadays any strike action gets the attention of the fat cats and government in case it goes bad. Especially in a case like this where it's the government that's the problem."

Kurt snorted. "When isn't it?" He sighed, sending mist mingling with the smoke in mid-air, only to spiral up into the blank white afternoon sky. "The Brits really messed that up for us, huh?"

It had only been a couple of years ago. The miner's union in the UK had been striking over mine closures caused by their Prime Minster's cuts. It had been a bad situation already, but it had only gotten worse when the supervillain Scar had assassinated Margaret Thatcher. Her replacement, John Major, had reversed the cuts, and managed to get the unemployment down to only a little above what it had been before Thatcher took power – but the reputation of the trade unions took a nosedive, many who'd hailed Scar as a literal working class hero lost faith in him, and any kind of direct action got the kind of careful scrutiny you only got when a government official's own ass was on the line.

Hence, the two squad cars using taxpayer money to sit and eat donuts while watching us instead of actually helping enforce justice in the city. If I was police chief – hah – I'd have gotten them to maybe go and arrest some Nazis, but that was just me.

"We have every right to be here," I reminded him. "Just… don't do anything to give them an excuse."

He snorted. "Yeah, right back at you. Wasn't it you that punched a cop that one time?"

"I… yeah, okay, I did. I was angry. They were trying to bust in our home and take my dad after our landlord called and complained!"

Kurt's brows furrowed. "Danny, what do you care if your dad gets busted? Seems to me it'd give you and your mom a bit of a break if he cooled off in a cell once in a while. You got a temper, but you never take it out on me or your mom. Your dad's just an asshole, no offence."

Well, he wasn't wrong. I squashed the stupid urge to defend my dad to my friend. He knew exactly what it was like for me growing up, and he had the right to call my father out for losing his temper with us. Hell, he'd lost his temper with Kurt once or twice, usually when he was hungover and we were both making too much noise. Still, though… "Yeah, it'd be a break. And he'd come home and drink to forget it and be twice as worse the next day. Besides, it's our house. The cops don't get to just- just barge in and think they've solved our problems and then leave. They don't _help_. They don't _care_. The only thing that's gonna help is if I keep on working and make life just a bit easier on them both, and make sure they've got friends around, people who know, to help out when things get bad. Hell, if more of the world did that we'd hardly need cops at all." I huffed out a heavy breath, then shook my head. "Sorry for the rant."

"Hey, hey, I'm right with you, buddy. You know you can always count on me, right? I got your back, and you got mine, same as always." Kurt smiled, and I smiled back.

"Thanks, Kurt. I appreciate it."

* * *

After a while someone got up on a soapbox – that was, a literal soapbox, or at least a crate of some kind – and blew a whistle to get everyone's attention. I recognised him – Fred Morgan, one of the Dockworker's Association reps. I turned to listen. I wasn't that involved with the union, but I was willing to listen to what they had to say. They had our best interests at heart, after all. That was, us as people, not just as effective workers like the companies and city did. If they could really negotiate some better conditions for us – better pay from the shipping companies, more protections and benefits guaranteed on any dockworkers' contracts – maybe I'd think about working for them directly. It was a chance to make an actual difference to people's lives. There were precious few of those around, God knew.

"Alright," Morgan was saying, "I'd like to thank everyone that cared enough to make it out here. You're the reason we do what we do, and this city wouldn't be the same without you." Scattered cheering. Kurt waved his sign.

"Now, I'm pleased to report the Stansfield Conglomerate appears to be wavering on our central demands, and where they lead others are likely to follow. If we can get Thomas Stansfield to come out in our corner on the issues we're really firm on, I think we have a good chance of getting the mayor and the rest of the corporations to listen to us, and God willing we should all be back at work on Monday." More cheers, and some excited muttering.

"Or," came a different voice from behind us, "you ingrates could stop throwing your tools out of the pram and go back to work _now."_

Everyone turned. When they saw who had shown up, we all froze.

Galvanate was here.

Flanked by five thugs in suits, the mob enforcer strolled towards us, stopping just a couple of metres from the edge of the crowd. Within moments, that edge was retreating, people almost falling over themselves in an effort to get away from the supervillain. Kurt and I backed up as well, until all fifty of us at the picket line were pressed up against the gates to Lord's Port.

Galvanate was dressed differently to his goons. They were all in cheap suits and heavy coats, clearly chosen to try and give them some kind of class. The saying about polishing a turd applied. Galvanate himself was dressed more casually – jeans, turtleneck jumper, brown bomber jacket. ON his face he wore a black domino mask – like he was some kind of opera character. Despite the cold, his hands were bare.

Galvanate chuckled. "Aw gee, you all that scared of little old me? Come on, you know I'm just a regular Joe like you. Won't see _me_ flying around in my jammies or shitting lightning outta my ass. Nah, the real heroes? My buddies right here." He patted the two thugs beside him on the shoulder, and we all flinched.

We'd heard of what Galvanate could do. While he'd been telling the truth in that he had no superpowers of his own, Galvanate was still a parahuman. With a touch, he could grant anyone – _anyone,_ even some random punk off the street who'd never heard of superpowers before – the ability to simply not be harmed by pretty much anything the police had found. Bullets bounced off their skin, knives would blunt rather than penetrate, fire left the skin unscorched. Worse, he also gave them the ability to channel electricity through their bodies, like a living dynamo. They could even shoot bolts of lightning a short distance from themselves.

Galvanate was why the mafia was even still relevant in a city like Brockton Bay, with its superpowered Nazi gang. Pretty much singlehandedly, he made the mob almost impossible for the police to deal with. With just invulnerability, the police could just cuff and restrain his minions. With just electricity, they could use tear gas, a water cannon, or just shoot to kill. But with invulnerability and an unbeatable advantage in close quarters? The police were powerless.

Well, those things probably didn't make nearly as much a difference as the fat stacks of cash the pigs were paid off with. Behind Galvanate's little group, I could see the squad cars. The police were showing a noticeable lack of giving a shit.

"Now see, I'm just like you guys," Galvanate continued. "I believe we all should work together and make this city a better place. Key word: fucking _work_. You think you're being screwed over? Let me tell ya – you ain't seen shit. You should be fucking grateful you get to work in a city as generous as this. You got work that's booming, you get fair pay, pay that was damn well good enough for you not even five years ago; hell, you're not even having to pay protection money out of your own pockets 'cause your bosses have shown some goddamn sense and paid up for your ungrateful asses! You guys got a good thing going here, so quit your whining and start making this city tick again." He took a step forward, and his thugs moved with him. One of them kicked over the drum Kurt and I had been warming our hands on earlier, and chuckled nastily.

There was muttering. Then, voice trembling, Fred Morgan spoke up.

"S-Screw you! Yeah, we're free to work! Free to break our backs every goddamn day while our bosses rake in the benefits and pass it off to the politicians and you leeches, while we never see a single dime! Well I say, fuck them, and fuck you too! We're not working until we get a decent wage, a wage that reflects the good we're doing to this city!" A cheer rose up, but it was pretty halfhearted.

Galvanate's eyes narrowed. "You don't get it, do you? This right here? This is me asking nicely. My boss, he wanted to just have me beat the crap out of you guys for having the balls to try and fuck up the natural workings of his city, but hey, you can't work if you're fucked up, right? But my patience only goes so far, _Fred Morgan_. How are your kids, by the way? They should be in school right now, huh?" He snapped his fingers. "Winslow High, yeah. How is the place? Man, it's been a while. Maybe I should go pay a visit to the old _alma mater_?"

Morgan faltered, and paled. Jeez. That wasn't exactly subtle. If Galvanate had threatened my mom like that…

The enforcer waited a moment, then shook his head. "Pussy. Now if that's all-"

 _CRACK_

Morgan held a gun in shaking hands, and turned to address us. "B-bastard!" he shouted. "You threaten my kids? This is what you get! Come on, people, they're just five guys-" and then he stopped. Slowly, he turned back to look at the completely unharmed mob enforcer, shielded by one of his goons.

Galvanate frowned. "Well, well, well. Looks like you got some balls after all. No brains whatsoever, but balls. You wanna-" He was cut off by more gunshots.

Each and every one bounced off the thug, who pushed himself in front of Galvanate. The bullets didn't seem to even tickle him. When Morgan's gun clicked empty, Galvanate stepped out from behind his lackey.

"And there we go. See, I'm not a fucking idiot, Freddie. These guys? I bet you thought they were just some random schmucks I picked up off the street, huh? Nah. I've been working with these assholes for, jeez, how long now, Barney?"

"About three years, Mr. G," the thug replied.

"Three years. There's a reason I keep them around, and it ain't because of Barney's fragrant aroma, I can tell you that." His bodyguards all laughed, including Barney. "These guys are some of the best in the business at watching my back. They keep an eye out for trouble, I make sure they can take care of that trouble. And they're very well practised at using my little gifts." He patted each them on the shoulder again, then looked out over the crowd, a sick gleam in his eye.

"Didn't I say I liked people to work together?"

With that, all but one of the thugs charged into the crowd, hemmed in by the gates and the buildings on each side. There were screams and yells as people tried to escape, to rush past. There was the sound of thunder as the thugs Galvanate had empowered let loose with short-range bolts of lightning. There were thuds as people dropped to the floor, shocked into paralysis by the living tasers that Galvanate's goons had become. There were _sharper_ thuds as invulnerable fists hit very vulnerable flesh.

I grabbed Kurt's arm. "We have to go, now!"

He was having none of it, shaking with rage. "You bastards!" I pulled harder.

"Come _on_ , we can't do anything, _Kurt_ , stop being an _idiot_ -"

He tore free and swung his sign at the closest suited enforcer. It shattered, and the weight of the blow knocked the man over. Kurt balled his fists and charged in with a bellow. He swung once, twice, and then backed off, shaking his hand. It was broken. The thug got to his feet and dusted himself off. Lightning crackled around his hand, and he reached out and grabbed Kurt's face.

I stood frozen in indecision for a second, then span with a sob and ran. I ran away.

"Fuck, Kurt, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, fuck..."

As I passed the cop cars, part of me couldn't help but look inside.

The officers were still sitting there in stony silence.

I ran all the way home, and collapsed, head in hands.

* * *

There were only a couple of deaths among the crowd of strikers that day. Fred Morgan was one, found charred and beaten to death on the spot he'd made his hopeful speech. He'd been a good man, but a stupid one. The world was new to parahumans, but pretty much everyone agreed that these 'capes' were invincible to one normal human, even with weapons to even the score. I'd heard the government was trying to put together some team or division that would focus on hunting down criminal parahumans, but they would have access to cutting-edge military hardware and special training. Fred Morgan had had nothing but his good intentions, and, as always, that wasn't nearly enough.

With the back of the strike broken, the union had retracted its demands, out of concern for the safety of all involved. We'd all had no choice but to return to work. Well, no, not quite all. Some of us were still too injured to work. Some of us would never be coming back. The atmosphere of those of us who'd been lucky enough to escape unscathed was dismal. No-one really spoke to each other, or to our bosses. We just showed up, worked our hours, and left.

Kurt was in hospital. He'd been there for two days now, and when I phoned up they'd said he was still too injured to receive visitors. I… I wasn't sure he'd even want to see me. He had to blame me for how he got injured. Fuck, the day was supposed to be about standing together, but when it really mattered I'd just ran. _Fuck_.

But I couldn't just leave it like that. I had to, to explain, or do _something_. So I'd gone to visit Kurt's parents' house, to explain what had happened to their little boy.

The Foster house was exactly as I remembered it, from a thousand visits in my childhood. Tiny, of course, a little terraced place in the middle of the maze of residential streets near the docks, but it had been almost like a second home to me growing up. Hell, I'd slept here almost more than my own house some weeks, when Dad was in a bad mood again and I just couldn't handle it any more. Foster by name, foster by nature, I guessed. The thought almost made me smile, before I remembered why I was here.

The inside of the house hadn't changed one bit either. The same furniture, the same decorations. If it had been in some rich family's house, it might have been called antique – inherited from Kurt's grandmother, and maybe from before that. Instead, it was just old. It wasn't like they were going to throw any of it away, or replace it. Seeing it was… comforting.

I accepted a cup of tea, and before I could psych myself out of it I told Kurt's mom and dad what had happened that day, and how I'd run away.

"… and I just ran," I finished. "Karen, Larry, I'm so sorry for leaving Kurt behind-"

"Oh, stop it, Daniel," said Karen Foster. "There wasn't a single thing you could have done, and Kurt doesn't blame you at all, I'm sure."

My eyes filled with tears. "But- I'm supposed to- we've always helped each other- I mean he's stuck up for me so many times and..." There was a silence, and I felt the crushing weight of their sympathy. "Kurt's in hospital and I just ran away and saved myself! That's not how a friend should act!"

"You're talking nonsense, Danny," said Kurt's dad. "The only thing that would have changed would be that you'd be right there in the hospital next to him." While his house was identical, Larry Foster looked different to how I remembered him. While growing up, he'd been the giant who'd pick me and Kurt up and spin us around, like we were toys. He'd always seemed unstoppable, invincible, and larger than life, even when I grew taller than him.

Now he just looked old, and tired, and small.

I wanted to protest that he didn't get it. That I _should_ be right there with him, because it'd mean that I'd actually tried to keep _both_ of us out of there. Even if it seemed futile, you didn't just… give up. Didn't just run away. Wasn't that was solidarity was all about? Wasn't standing up for yourself regardless of opposition the point of the whole worker's rights movement?

Because sure, if I'd tried to fight off the thug attacking Kurt, I'd have been beaten down too. But if ten of us had rushed him, we could have escaped. If everyone on the picket line had just organised and bullrushed their way past Galvanate, no-one would have had to die or get injured at all. One man held the power, and told us we couldn't change how things worked, and the rest of us were too scared to realise that if we stood together he had no power at all. Now didn't _that_ sound familiar?

But I didn't say any of that, because Larry's son was in the hospital and it was my fault, and nothing I said would change that. So if he wanted to forgive me, then that was his right, no matter how much I disagreed. Instead, I nodded, and changed the subject.

"So how much is- I mean, have you heard what it'll cost yet?" No-one I knew had health insurance, but they also earned just enough that Medicaid wasn't available. Not that anyone had the time to go through the process over and over again, dealing with less and less helpful government stooges until something got done.

Larry's eyes studied the floor, and his hand sought his wife's. "Too much," he said.

Karen squeezed her husband's hand, and explained, "Any amount of money is worth it if it saves my boy's life. And we've spoken to the hospital and we're trying to arrange a payment plan. But… we won't be able to afford it. Even with our savings, it won't cover the hospital bill. We'd need to pay it back over years of tightening our belts even more than we have been if they let us, or at worst mortgage the house."

I sat in shock. "But you worked so hard to buy it! You shouldn't need to do that! Can't… I don't know, can't they make the scum who did this pay for it? Isn't Kurt entitled to some kind of compensation? He's the victim of assault, for God's sake!"

Larry gave a bitter laugh. "You want to try and get money out of the mafia? Danny, if we had the money to hire the army of lawyers necessary to pull that off we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. Didn't you hear? The police filed this whole incident under 'gang activity'. There's not a judge in the entire city'd give compensation to what he's been told is a gang member who got hurt in a street brawl."

My mouth opened and closed. I thought I'd been cynical about the 'justice' system before, but… "I can't believe it. That's just..."

"Unfair, of course." Karen gave a sad smile. "But we'll muddle through somehow. We always have." She looked at her husband, then down at the floor, and there was a silence. After a moment she said, a bit too brightly, "Come on, you've barely touched your tea, Daniel! What would your mother say?"

I did as I was told, but I felt a rising heat that had nothing to do with the tea.

* * *

I barely remembered making an excuse to the Fosters and leaving. Hell, I didn't even remember the walk home, I was that angry.

Karen might have brushed it off, but I knew just how important owning their house was to them. Not just because of the money. It meant they didn't owe anything to anybody. It meant they had a place that was unquestionably theirs. It meant _home_.

And now that was all gone.

Because of me.

But more importantly, because the system had _failed._ When a man like Kurt was hurt by a criminal and his family was punished for it, the system wasn't working. Crime. Corruption. The decks being stacked worse than a Vegas card sharp, and all to keep people like Kurt's family down. It seemed like every part of the entire project – of government, of the corporations, of the criminal enterprises, and I wasn't sure if there was even a difference – was designed to keep the ruling class on top and everyone else on the bottom. Even when we were the ones who made everything tick. Even when we were all supposed to be equal in this goddamned _sham_ of a democracy. Even though all the money Kurt needed right now was surely sitting in some fat cat's bank account, unused, a thousand times over and more.

And the most direct expression of this unfairness? _Capes_. If Galvanate hadn't been there, if it had just been regular unpowered thugs, there was no doubt in my mind as to the outcome. We _would_ have stood together, would have laughed at the suggestion that we return to work. But a single parahuman had changed the game entirely. One man had been enough to tear down what fifty had tried to build. One man, who plugged himself into this broken system, and used the power he'd been given to kick down those weaker than himself.

Sure, there were heroes. Legend, Eidolon, and, well, Hero. Not every cape was a cog in the machine, at least not much more than anyone else. But then, who appointed these people? Who said they were suitable to enforce the laws of the people? An elite class taking it upon themselves to use force to enact justice: wasn't that inherently fascistic, when you got right down to it? No matter how noble their intentions, they still used force as a first, last, and only means to maintain the status quo.

 _It. Wasn't. Right_.

Now, I'm familiar with rage. I try to stay calm most of the time, because I've seen what happens when a man doesn't keep a lid on himself, but I'd inherited my dad's anger issues just as surely as I'd inherited my mom's build.

This was something entirely different. Not red-hot and explosive, but bone-deep and ugly. This anger had no target. No-one to lash out and punch, because what I needed to punch was the entire world. It didn't burn, it _twisted_ inside me like a snake.

And unlike when I usually lost my temper, I didn't stop thinking. In fact, I felt myself thinking clearer than ever before, as I entered my apartment in a sort of trance.

Why _should_ we let capes have all the power all the time? Really, why? Wouldn't it be better if we could just… switch their powers off whenever they weren't actively being used to support the causes that were worth fighting for? Or hell, just permanently. I wasn't fussed.

The world didn't need capes to save it. We'd broken free from the idea of the divine right of kings, from slavery, from all kinds of discrimination. We weren't _nearly_ there yet, but the groundwork had been laid just by people doing what people did, and not because someone had used their own personal power to make it so. When you looked at it that way, the fact that the existence of capes put the focus entirely on one small group of separate individuals to change the world was the _worst_ thing about it.

Something needed to be done. And I had an idea that just might make it possible.

I grabbed a pen and paper and started scribbling.


	2. Chapter 2 - Means of Production

I've never been a particularly creative person. Artists on the radio or TV talked about how they had some project that just wouldn't rest until it was out of them, or how they felt their idea was forming _itself,_ with them as an almost helpless observer during the process. I'd never once felt like that. Granted, I wasn't much of a reader, so it wasn't like I was going to be the next Shakespeare in any case. My folks had never been able to afford any music lessons, and I didn't exactly have the time or energy to teach myself at this point, so I wasn't going to be in a band either. Like I said, I didn't do creative.

But the idea I'd had while storming home – this was something else, something _big._ And it was intuitive, too. It was so… so _obvious_ to me that I simply couldn't see why no-one had ever even bothered to test it out. Maybe they had, and it didn't work. I mean, even _I'd_ seen the idea, with my high school diploma and nothing else, so there was no way some government think tank hadn't been able to come up with something similar, right? That was what I told myself, even as I rummaged around for my toolkit and prepared the right kind of screwdriver to disassemble my wristwatch.

Still, though. It wouldn't even be that hard to make a prototype. Just a proof-of-concept, even, just to check that it really didn't work. Who knows? I chuckled as I jury-rigged the toaster into a makeshift soldering iron – maybe I'd find something those brainboxes had missed. Heh.

Wait, soldering iron? Something struck me as off about what I'd just done. I peered through my glasses at the twist of coat-hanger holding the remains of my toaster off the kitchen counter, where the heating coil was glowing red-hot. Just a pretty simple array, re-purposing an old appliance. I bet there were books on this for any aspiring DIY engineer. So why did it feel so bizarre for me to have done it?

Oh. Right. I didn't have any solder.

Well, there was an electronics store just a couple of blocks away, I knew. One of those little places that sold everything. I rushed out of the door. A few seconds later, I rushed back in, and picked up my scribbled notes, and ran down the street, writing down new ideas all the while.

I must have looked like some junkie as I hunted, wide-eyed, through the store. I'd definitely been in here before, I was sure of that. But they must have had a refurbishment or change of management or _something_ , because it had definitely not been this fascinating last time. I mean, okay, found the solder, awesome. But, like, did you know you can just _buy_ transistors? And integrated circuits? And resistors? I must not have been looking the last time I came in here for, I don't know, plug fuses or something, because there was no way I could have missed all this.

Frankly it was a good thing I'd paid my rent just last week. This way, it was just my food and bills money that went towards buying literally everything I thought might be useful. And really, did I need that much food? Did I need electricity?

...okay, actually I did need electricity, because this thing wasn't going to build itself. On the other hand, it wouldn't be _that_ hard to rig up a sort of generator, just a crude one so I could keep the lights on. And in fact it wouldn't even need to be that crude if I just… just…

For the first time since I'd gotten home, my mind stopped sparking for a second. It'd been throwing out all these brilliant ideas towards the project, but for this new one, the generator, it felt like it was missing something. I could definitely make a simple power source, but there was something I wasn't connecting, something I just wasn't seeing, that would push it to a whole new level. Something to think about later, maybe. For now, I had something much more important to work on.

I had hardly got home before I was ripping my goodies out of their packaging and setting to work. God, I was just so _excited_. I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt this way – felt so enthusiastic and hopeful and… clear-headed. Although I guess I had just spent all my money on what were basically impulse buys, so maybe I wasn't so clear-headed. But I _felt_ like I was.

I felt wide awake even as the clock ticked past three in the morning. Sleep was boring, staying awake was _easy_ if it was for this. Besides, my brain was fizzing like a glass of champagne and I couldn't have stopped even if I wanted to. Every second brought a new idea, a new piece to the puzzle. Of _course_ I needed to resonate the quartz from my alarm clock to better stabilise the wavelength I was working with! How simple! And to think, if I'd gone to sleep like my treacherous body wanted, I'd have missed out on that idea entirely, and the field of effect would have been about a tenth of the size!

At last I was done. My proof-of-concept sat on the kitchen table surrounded by loose wires and lengths of solder. I hadn't bothered with any kind of chassis or casing, so it was a mess of exposed electronics plugged into the mains.

The sun was just creeping over the skyline, I saw. God, had I really gone the whole night without sleep? My head swam just thinking about it. No food either. How had I not noticed any of this? How had I gone _twelve hours_ doing nothing but… but tinkering with my new idea?

My gaze went to it, sitting innocuously on the table. It… was a _good_ idea. It was something that would turn this entire world on its head, if it worked. It would put the power back… okay, not where it _belonged_ , the ruling class would still have their system to keep the poor in our place, but at least it would remove _one_ group of arbitrarily-selected elites from the equation.

And I had no goddamn idea how it worked.

I stared at it, trying to remember how I'd even built it. That little coil there, what did that do? Why were the resistors necessary right there? Nothing came to mind. The most important thing I'd ever done, and it was a mystery to me.

...I guessed that meant it worked.

The designs for my next power-jammer, though, would definitely include an _off-switch_.

Look, I wasn't the brightest bulb in the box, but I'd figured it out at some point. Getting the brilliant idea, out of nowhere, for a device that could switch parahuman powers off wasn't how it worked, no matter how much you wanted it. That one percent of inspiration couldn't make up the ninety-nine percent groundwork and background knowledge – not to mention the technical and engineering skills that had destroyed my toaster.

No way around it – I was a parahuman. One of those super-science types, like Hero. My 'power' was a general knack for technology, for building amazing things. Given the contents of my kitchen, I could make tools to rival any engineering lab in the country. Given enough time and resources, I could make _anything_. That was my gift. And so, that was what my device had blocked.

Well, that wouldn't do. I made to dismantle it to start over, then thought better of it. Grabbing my notes, I wrote in a margin:

OFF SWITCH

Given how driven I'd been when constructing my proof-of-concept, I wasn't sure I'd be able to avoid diving right back into work when my powers were switched back on. So, destroying version one could wait until I'd eaten and slept for, oh, maybe a week.

I'd definitely be missing work. I definitely didn't care. What were they going to do, call me in? About half of my phone was on the kitchen table and the rest was in the device.

I wasn't sure on the range of my creation, or how it would be affected by the walls between my bedroom and the kitchen. I moved it to the bedside cabinet, drew the curtains, and flopped down onto my pillow. Thinking of new designs was for tomorrow, when I'd activated my powers again. So was reflecting on just what the hell I'd done, globally speaking. This was the kind of thing people started wars over.

But for now, I had time. For now, the ball was in my court.

I closed my eyes and sank into sleep almost immediately.

* * *

The Dockworkers Association office was a long, low, squat-looking building, surrounded by a small and dismal-looking parking lot. A converted warehouse, really, which had been used by one of the shipping companies that the Stansfield Conglomerate had bought out. After the merger, all the management had been shifted to the new Stansfield building in the financial district. Given the choice, I'd choose the big shiny capitalist symbol as well. At least that had reliable heating in the winter. The union office wasn't actually on the waterfront, although it was close enough that the dank smell of fish and seaweed seemed ground into the walls.

It had been raining all day. Not hard, just constantly, enough to bring up the smell of the drains to add to the usual bouquet in this part of town. Enough that the gutters ran in little rivers past the entrance to the Dockworkers Association office, where I'd been waiting in the shade of a bus shelter. I'd shared it with a homeless guy, who didn't seem to mind. He might not have even woken up, I wasn't going to bother him and check.

A car pulled up, splashing water onto the sidewalk. It was far too nice for this part of town, but then I supposed it wasn't planning to stay long. Two men in long woollen coats stepped out, under umbrellas. The mafia, of course. Who else would hide brute thuggery under a thin veneer of class and respectability? Apart from the police, of course. Ahem.

This was my cue.

I stepped out from under the bus shelter, pulling up my scarf to cover my nose and mouth. Between it and the hood of my sweatshirt, only my eyes were visible. It wasn't a costume, just a mask. For one thing, I couldn't afford a proper costume like Legend's or Eidolon's. I might eventually be able to make something like Hero's armour, but for now that was beyond me. Actually, thinking about it, my power was coming up with a great big shrug, same as it did for the generator, so maybe it was just plain beyond me altogether.

The other reason it was just covering my face and not a full costume was that there was a point I was trying to make. The man who was going to help rebalance the scales and remove normal humans from under the boot of capes wasn't going to wear a costume. He appeared wearing the clothes of the populace, could be just a face in a crowd, and anyone using the tools he built could be just as much a threat to the cape-established order. I could be anyone. By the time I was through distributing my devices, I intended to be _everyone_.

That was the plan, anyway.

One of the men noticed me, but I kept on walking, head down, not fast, not slow. One hand held the strap of my cheap sports bag, the other was in my pocket. I was far enough away that, to all appearances, I was just another dockworker coming in to help out, snuggled under his scarf for warmth. After an appraising glance at me, the man apparently decided I wasn't a threat and continued inside. Besides, if he was going to cause a scene, he'd want to do it inside out of the rain.

The inside of the union office wasn't much better than the outside. The building was in pretty poor repair – the union didn't have much money to spare, and it showed. Wind rushed through gaps in ill-fitted windows, and disturbed the dust on the sills. The office was cleaned regularly, by volunteers, but in a place like this there was always more dust. Maybe half the lights I saw as I discreetly followed the out-of-place men were broken or flickering, casting odd shadows on the walls where the paint had started peeling off.

Eventually the men stopped outside an office. I was still too far down the corridor to see the tarnished nameplate on the door, but I knew whose place this was. I'd done my homework, these last couple of days, figuring out how I was going to unveil my power-jammer. That was why I'd waited for the mafia, staking out the union building to come in just as they did.

I didn't think either of these two were capes. They didn't have to be. When it came to putting pressure on industry leaders, a soft word and a subtle threat was more than enough. Bringing a cape into the situation was overkill. Hell, just _mentioning_ a cape like Galvanate would probably be more than enough. And that was exactly why I was doing it this way. The mafia had to be shown that they couldn't back up their threats, not with capes, not anymore. I was going to bring their protection racket down on their heads, and like all demolitions it was going to start from the ground up.

...also, this had been the most effective way I could think of to lure Galvanate out. It wasn't like I knew who he was or where he lived. Another reason I'd wanted to cover my face while doing this.

One of the men knocked on the door, then went inside without waiting for an answer.

"Come in- ah, shit," came a voice from the office's occupant.

I moved closer, and lurked outside in the corridor.

"Mr. Hong," one of the men said. New York accent, which was unusual. "You know why we're here, so I'm not going to waste everyone's time with pleasantries. Are you going to accept our generous offer?"

Kenny Hong put his hand to his head. He was a middle-aged guy, second-generation Hong Kong descent. His head was shaved, something you didn't often see among the dockworkers because of the bad associations with the local skinhead gang, Empire Eighty Eight. In Kenny's case, though, he was vaguely buddhist – not a monk, just a devout follower – and had refused to let what he saw as a symbol of letting go of material attachments turn into a solely fascist statement. He'd only recently been given the position as regional head of the Brockton Bay Dockworkers Association, probably as a move by the vice-director to make a point about that same E88. Solidarity, again. Certainly sympathy for the Nazi gang had never been high among the dockworkers, and had dropped to near nothing since Allfather, the parahuman leader, had begun his own major play for power.

Like I said, I'd done my homework. I could see myself getting involved a bit more with the union in future. Given that I'd now missed, what, three full days of work? I was, uh, kind of counting on it.

Kenny scowled at the mafia thugs. "Like I told you guys last time, we don't have any more money for you to squeeze out of us. You can hike your prices as high as you like, there just isn't any more. That's it. We're barely in the black as it is!"

"Now, see, that's just poor business practice," the second man said. Local boy, by the sound of him. "Any good financier knows that you can always find just a little more. You might have to tighten your belts, cut down on a few nonessentials, maybe stay at the office a little later to get things done, but if you really put in the effort, you can find a little extra to keep your business going until the wind changes."

"We're not a business," Kenny said coldly. "We're a union. We get our funds from member subscriptions, and that's set up in the union charter, nothing I can do about that. And even before that, our funding is decided by head office. If you want more money out of us, maybe give them a call yourselves and tell them to chuck a little love our way first?" He folded his arms, but I could see them shaking slightly.

The two mafia goons looked at each other. "So basically, that's a no, got it," said New York. "Well, we got our instructions in case of a refusal. Let's get to it." They stepped forward. I figured that was my _next_ cue.

I'm not especially muscular, like I said. But each one of my arms is long enough that it practically cracks like a whip when I move it fast, and I'm not especially weak either. When I hold a long item, such as the wrench I'd brought from home, in my hand, that moving end just gets even faster. The weapon is also useful for not having to hurt my hand by striking something hard like, for example, a skull. All of this meant two things.

First, I barely had to step through the door to clock the closest mafioso in the back of the head. Second, when I did he went down and stayed there.

The second man turned in time to catch the backswing on one of his arms. His other arm went for his pocket, no doubt for a gun. Couldn't have that. I hit him again, upside the chin. He fell over.

"Don't worry, I'm here to help," I said to Kenny Hong, putting my boot on the conscious thug's head.

"Who are you?" he asked, eyes darting between me and the mafia goons. "Do you know what you've done? They'll send _Galvanate_ after us!"

"Let him come," I said grimly. The thug was struggling, so I put a little pressure on him. "You hear that?" I told him. "The dockworkers are through being pushed around by the mafia. This is us saying 'no more'. You can forget about the protection money, too. Hey, tighten your belts a little, you'll be able to keep your business going until the wind changes." I stepped off, and let the guy up, but kept my wrench pointed between his eyes. "Run to your master, attack dog."

"You're fucking dead," New York said, backing off. "You don't know it, but all that's left to do is bury your ass." He looked at the union leader. "Kenny, just cause I like you, I'm not going to hold this against you. We're going to come back in an hour, and you and Galvanate can talk this out like reasonable adults. When we do, you're going to give us the name of this kid, and we'll say no more about it. Try and hide him, try and claim you don't know him, and Galvanate might not be so kindly inclined. One hour, dipshits. One hour." He picked up his fallen comrade – comrade, hah, these fucks didn't deserve the term – and made his way out.

I waited until they were gone, then let out a shaky breath and sank to my knees. It had only just now sunk in just how badly that could have gone wrong. My new powers didn't do a single thing to help me win fights, and I was never very good at them in the first place. If the first thug had noticed me before I'd struck, or not been all the way knocked out, or if New York had managed to go for his gun quicker, or had already pulled it… my breath came in gasps. _Fuck_ , that had been close. My power was no help whatsoever. When I tried to apply it to the prospect of 'never having to do that ever again, thank you', it came up blank. Again, though, the feeling of something missing.

A hand settled on my shoulder, and pulled me out of my thoughts. "Okay, kid," said Kenny. "I'm gonna make some coffee, and we can… can have a talk about what the fuck we're gonna do."

I turned my head and looked at him. "You're not even considering giving me up?"

He snorted. "You're fucking stupid, kid, but even you don't deserve whatever Galvanate's going to do to you. Even if it _is_ your fault." He walked across the room to a coffee pot, and poured us both a cup. "Just what in the hell were you thinking, anyway, jumping in like that?"

"They were going to hurt you," I pointed out, standing up and brushing myself off. "That's what they were here for."

Kenny added about four sugars to his cup, and shrugged. "All they'd have done was push me around a little, put the fear of God into me. I don't care about that shit, and honestly neither do they. They go home feeling like they've achieved something, I go home and put ice on the bruises, and life goes on. And we'd have a couple more days to try and negotiate, maybe catch their boss in a good mood. Now, though, you just upped the stakes, and that sadistic fuck Galvanate's on his way." He sighed. "I suppose I'd better call up a few guys. If it's just you and me, we're probably dead, but he won't want to kill all of us, it calls too much attention. I suspect one or both of us will be in hospital by the time this is done, though."

I took a gulp of Kenny's coffee. It was absolutely awful, of course. "No. We'll be fine. Call up everyone. As many bodies as will show up. The more the better."

Kenny gave me a look. "You want to make a fight of it? Kid, we just lost a good man here at the union when he tried to fight back at the strike a few days ago. Fred Morgan, his name was, rest in peace."

"I know. I was there." It might have been my mask, or the lingering adrenaline, but I'd noticed I was a lot more laconic than I usually was. How odd… although I guessed it made it harder to identify my voice.

"Then you know it's hopeless. We can't fight against Galvanate, not even with a hundred of us."

"Yes, we can." I reached inside my backpack and pulled out the power-jammer. "With this."

The second version of my power-jammer did not, in fact, have an off-switch. In fact, to look at, it didn't have any switches at all, just a metallic conical structure. The design was fairly reminiscent of a limpet, and in fact this was where I'd got the inspiration from. The functionality wouldn't change, no matter what kind of casing I put it in – the wavelength it broadcast wasn't noticeably amplified or dampened by the surrounding material, although I made a mental note to check that using more exotic materials – so I could have made it look however I chose. I had toyed with a few futuristic designs, before realising that it was no good to me if Galvanate or one of his goons just threw it out of the window.

So I made it squat, difficult to get a grip on, and capable of sticking to any flattish surface. I also realised that it would be no good if it could be unplugged, either, so I'd had to put together my simple generator. As expected, it was pretty subpar, but it got the job done. And the off-switch, I'd realised, was the same point of failure. It was no good to me if some cape could just turn it off. So I'd had to come up with an alternative.

One of the reasons I'd kept my hood up was to help conceal my face, as I said. The other reason was to conceal the back of my head, where a little electrode was attached, humming quietly. The ideas from my power had come thick and fast for this little piece of kit, same as they had for the original power-jammer, and I would be making some improvements to it as soon as I had some time and proper equipment. I had named it it, in a fit of imagination, the power-jammer-canceler. It protected a single parahuman from the effects of the power-jammer, when attached to the head. I was considering making some kind of implant for version two.

Kenny took it in his hands, and turned it over a couple of times. "The hell is this?"

"An equalizer."

Kenny stopped, and looked at me sharply. "A weapon."

"An _equalizer_. It'll level the playing field."

By now the man was holding it very delicately with two fingers, as though it were a live bomb. "Are… are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"That depends on what you think I'm saying. But… yes. This device will stop Galvanate from empowering his men." And, if the _extra_ feature I'd put in worked properly, maybe go one step better.

"Jesus." Kenny ran his hand through his hair. "Jesus. Okay. You know for sure it'll work?"

"Yes."

"How?"

I didn't have any answer, so I shrugged. Then I said, "I built it. It'll work."

The device went down on Kenny's desk, very carefully. I hadn't built the thing out of glass, so I wasn't sure why he was being so careful with it. I wanted to tell him, but it didn't seem to fit the mood. Besides, he was picking up the phone.

Before he dialled, he looked at me one more time. "Okay. I'm calling everyone in. But kid, I need you to know that I'm trusting you with this. If you're wrong, or if Galvanate finds some way to resist the effect, or if his men are invulnerable to your gadget like they are to everything else, you have to know it won't just be you or me that dies. I'm calling up good men, loyal men. They don't deserve to die on a whim just because some cape misjudged the situation, so if there's any doubt in your mind, any at all, now is the time to tell me."

Doubt? My head was full of hardly anything else. Was it the right thing to do? Should I really be taking matters into my own hands with this? Should I take it _more_ into my own hands, and not involve the rest of the dockworkers at all?

If I _really_ needed to, I could have laid low for longer, built better devices. I could have found Galvanate, for sure – my mind threw out designs for a device that worked like a radar for parahuman powers, another device that would identify whether or not someone was a parahuman just by scanning them, yet another that released a cloud of coloured gas that sought the nearest parahuman and stuck to them. Yes, I could have found Galvanate. I could have removed his powers for good, if I had to. The schematics for _that_ particular device rose up in my head, insidious and seductive, before I pushed it down firmly.

But I didn't just want to find and stop capes that were misusing their powers, I needed to put the real power back with the people it belonged to. If the people being hurt by Galvanate weren't a part of taking him down, any victory wouldn't mean a thing. The mafia would just hire some new cape, and get right back to business, and the union would believe it had no choice but to roll over, same as before. The dockworkers had to do it, had to _know_ they _could_ do it if they just stood together. All I was doing was changing it from an impossible game to a difficult one.

And I had no doubt whatsoever about my ability to do that. My device _would_ work. So I looked Kenny Hong in the eye and said, "Make the call."

* * *

All told, there were about thirty dockworkers who answered their union's call to arms. We met outside in the union office's parking lot, in an eerie re-enactment of the strike that Galvanate had broken only days ago. Again, people stood around in huddled groups of co-workers or friends, although there were a few independents whom I suspected had just come for the prospect of a fight. Last time, the mood had been grim determination. Now, there was an air of confusion. There were a lot of glances sent my way – my concealed face only made me stand out more. Since I recognised no fewer than five people from my own work (or former work, or whatever), I was glad I'd chosen to remain anonymous anyway.

Kenny had greeted each worker by name as they arrived, and explained why he was willing to risk sending them up against a cape like Galvanate. I had been nearby with my power-jammer, now safely in my backpack, and would tell them in rough terms what it did, and that they'd be safe. Again, I was glad that my curt manner made me unrecognisable to those people I already knew.

Partly, it was that idea that my masked persona could be anyone. Mostly, it was because I didn't want any of this to lead back to me, in any way. I trusted Kenny Hong – he'd struck me as a good man. I could even trust that the general feeling of solidarity would allow me to trust those who'd cared enough to come out and put their lives on the line for a, to them, untested and risky trump card. But I had no idea what methods the mafia would use to take their revenge – and there _would_ be a revenge, down the line, I knew that much. Better to keep myself safe, as much as possible.

After all, I was only getting started.

When it looked like no more people were coming, all that was left was to wait, and see if Galvanate would walk into my trap. When scared and curious people asked me questions – who I was, if I was a new cape, if I was local, how I'd gotten involved with the Dockworkers Association – I kept my answers short, and kept looking at the entrance where the cape would appear. That way, I hoped, no-one would realise I had no idea what I was doing.

He appeared.

Like before, it was so sudden no-one really saw it happen. Not even me, and I was specifically watching for it. Galvanate, flanked by the same five men that had broken the strike, casually walked round the corner and into the union office grounds. There was no tension in his gait, no sign that he was walking into a potentially lethal fight. He walked as if he owned the city. Maybe he did, at that.

Not any more.

Even when he saw the crowd gathered in the parking lot, he didn't slow down, though his head tilted to one side. His hands darted out and touched those of his henchmen, and he motioned one of them to walk directly ahead of him, while the others fanned out. Arcs of electricity played between their fingers, and one of them chuckled darkly. There were murmurs of dismay from the crowd of dockworkers, and Kenny looked at me in alarm.

Too far. It was too far away, I wasn't sure of the range on my power-jammer but Galvanate was still on the other side of the parking lot, and I knew it didn't stretch that far. Stupid! I should have realised that Galvanate would empower his men at the first sign of trouble. Maybe if I'd gone with a smaller crowd, or one less obviously spoiling or a fight – but then what if Galvanate's men had managed to overpower us anyway? Stupid of me. I had to hope that the extra tweak I'd added in a burst of inspiration worked just as well as the primary function.

But the range on that was… limited. I would have to get closer.

Keeping my eyes on Galvanate, I started walking forward. Kenny looked puzzled for a moment, but motioned the crowd to follow. I kept it slow. Again, partly to project that confidence and keep my ad hoc army from bolting, and partly to think of my next move.

Galvanate and I came to a stop not five paces from each other. Well within range, or it should be. He wouldn't be able to empower his men again. But not enough for what I needed. My mind raced.

The mafia cape wasn't about to give me time to think. "Okay, usually at this point I'd be giving a speech about how you ingrates are causing more trouble than you think you're solving by wasting everyone's time with protests that go nowhere. But, you know? I already gave that speech not three days ago, and look where we are. So, just this once, I'll be succinct." He looked me up and down. "Red hoodie, black and white checked scarf, right. You, you're dead." He looked around and pointed at Kenny. "Union leader, Chinese descent – you're dead too. Sorry and all, but we warned you what would happen and we gotta be strict on this kinda thing or we get people thinking they can skirt the rules all over the place. The rest of you – leave now, and we won't pursue. Two people are gonna die today, that's a fact, that's not gonna change. Let's try not to push that number any higher, okay?"

"That's not happening, Galvanate." My voice didn't quiver. I took a single, deiberate step forwards.

"Uh-huh. It is. I can't tell behind that mask, so I don't know if I've seen your face before or if you're new to the city or what, but basically? I decide who lives and who dies around here. But since that kinda things weighs heavy upon a gentle soul like mine, I'm going to try and save the lives of everyone else here. Hell, right now, I'm goddamn Hero, got it?"

I said nothing, but stepped forwards again, my hands coming out of my pockets to show that they were empty. One of Galvanate's minions barred my way, shaking his head.

"Look, with this kind of thing, it's a lot easier to just take out the head and let the body crumple. I don't know what kinda promises you made that this lot somehow forgot that I'm _a fucking parahuman_ , but it ends now. I kill you, I kill Mr, Hong over there, everyone goes home, and we don't have to have a massacre. Sound good? Good. Boys, if you please."

The minion who'd barred my way squared up to me. He spread his fingers, arcing them like claws. Facing me as he was, neither Galvanate nor any of the other bodyguards, having quietly moved to flank me, saw the look of surprise on his face.

I wasted no time. Before he could cry out a warning, I struck. It wasn't like I was an expert on fighting, but there was a pretty simple rule to sucker-punching a guy.

Just take out the head and let the body crumple.

No electricity. No invulnerability. The second feature of my power-jammer was working like a charm.

It had occurred to me, while building the second version, that a lot of the time, the actual parahuman wasn't the problem. Take Legend, not that I intended to fight the fourth or fifth most powerful person alive, depending on who you asked. My power-jammer would take away his powers, no doubt, leave him a powerless human… if I could get one close to him. Unfortunately, I'd seen how Legend fought. He hung in the sky, raining down destructive judgement like some Old Testament angel. As it stood, my power-jammer wouldn't do a damn thing to help me take down someone like Legend. I'd need some kind of advanced delivery system… or failing that, go the whole hog and _really_ make the thing earn its name as a power-jammer.

My second-generation power-jammer didn't just stop parahumans from using their powers. It also blocked the _effects_ of those powers, as long as those effects were dependent on that parahuman ability. If, say, Eidolon hovered a rock above me and let go, I was just as squished. (Although I had a couple of ideas for dealing with that hypothetical scenario.) But Legend could hurl his most powerful lasers at me all day and I'd just sit there laughing, secure in a zone of perfectly defined reality.

That had been the idea, but I'd hadn't yet been able to implement it to the scale that I wanted. The tech hadn't been the trouble, integrating it with my base-function power-jammer had. The two… fields, for lack of a better term, interacted oddly. For a while, I'd only been able to get one function or the other working, not both at once. Even now, the effects of my tweak only worked within a range of a couple of metres. Say, the range you'd want to be at to try and beat the hell out of a vigilante on behalf of your scumbag boss.

And now that their borrowed powers were erased, the primary effect made sure they wouldn't be getting them back from Galvanate.

There was a silence as the mafia thug hit the floor. I capitalised on the moment by kicking him in the jaw to encourage him to stay down. I glanced me behind me at the dockworkers. There were not a few looks of awe on the younger faces.

"He's just a man!" I yelled. "Fight for your freedom!"

There was a roar from the mob, and Galvanate turned and fled.


	3. Chapter 3 - Activist

We didn't kill Galvanate.

I was pretty new to vigilante justice, but I definitely didn't want to have a man's death on my conscience the first time I tried it. Even if that man was a complete scumbag, who wouldn't have cared if our roles had been reversed. Don't get me wrong, Galvanate deserved to pay for what he'd done, but in my head I had about a thousand movie love interests saying, "You're just like _him_ " in disgusted tones. So despite my anger, I held off.

To my surprise, everyone else did as well. We chased the mafia enforcer and his thugs to Harrison Street – way beyond what could be fairly called 'the docks' – and when I eased off, the momentum of the crowd following me vanished as well, leaving me standing in the street with fifty riled-up dockworkers and no idea what to do next. I cheered on general principles, raising one fist above my head.

The crowd answered.

Hats were thrown in the air, grown men were hugging each other, I was slapped on the back so many times I'd be developing bruises. I was glad no-one could see my expression under the disguise, because as soon as I'd stopped running my brain had started offering suggestions on how that situation could have gone _horribly wrong_.

Galvanate could have brought enough men to stand up to my hastily-gathered mob. My dockworkers could have had less heart, and refused to act, leaving me standing against six combat-ready men all by myself. Any one of those six could have thought to bring a gun, which would _really_ have left me screwed. The mafia could have just hired a sniper to take me out from afar, and not even bothered using Galvanate at all.

With each new option, my heart sank a little more, and now that the adrenaline was wearing off I could feel my limbs start to shake. What had I been thinking? Clearly, I hadn't been thinking at all. God, was I really so excited to play with my new toy that I'd gone ahead and challenged one of the more dangerous parahumans in the city to a fight? I resolved to _never_ go off half-cocked like that again. The whole point of science heroes like me was that we were supposed to have something prepared for every outcome – every problem was, eventually, fixable.

For example, I had the ghost of an idea as to how to solve the problem of being shot. It had that uncertain quality that I was beginning to file under 'more research required', like my improved generator. It felt like the theory and background knowledge was there, just waiting a spark of inspiration to be unlocked. Very annoying, like a missing tooth in my brain. So to speak.

Okay, new plan. Make more of my power-jammers, distribute them to volunteers and Kenny Hong so they can deal with any other parahuman problems if and when they happen, then sit down and have a _good think_ about what the hell my strategy was and how I was going to keep myself and others safe while doing it.

Yeah, I definitely couldn't be taking things as fast as I had been. Having an idealistic goal to change the world was all well and good, was necessary even, but there was no point if you couldn't _also_ find your way around the pragmatic side of things, or you'd end up with your high ideas leaking out of a bullet hole in your skull when the ruling class caught wind of your attempt to disrupt the status quo. Or at least rotting away in a jail cell while the courts conveniently lose all records of why you're there.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of applause. Okay, obviously, there was a lot of cheering going on, but this was different. Slow, deliberate, and _loud_. I turned. Walking through us, clapping sincerely, was a massive figure. He was dressed casually, like the dockworkers were – and like me, he had a scarf pulled up over his mouth and nose. Unlike mine, though, which was just the checked red and white one I'd had for years, his had a symbol on it - the anarchy symbol, a capital A breaking out of a circle. Where I had a hood, he had a black woollen hat, and my hoodie was matched by a russet-brown knit jumper.

As he approached, I was taken aback by just how large the man was – he'd looked big from far off, but he had to be around seven feet tall, for God's sake! His pace was unhurried, and he gently shouldered aside men I'd have called beefy if they weren't next to this guy. Within moments, most of the crowd had turned to face this newcomer, curious and hopeful – and, I saw, ready to stand up for me if necessary.

Those of the crowd that weren't still celebrating muttered among themselves. I managed to catch some words.

"Scrapyard..."

"...come at last..."

"...that crazy bastard..."

"...Scrapyard here now?"

As the man – Scrapyard, apparently – drew closer, the claps of his hands got softer, curiously. The scarf hid his mouth, but by now he was close enough that I could see his eyes. From the lines visible on the part his face left exposed, I guessed his age might have been late thirties, or a really healthy early forties. He looked like he was smiling. At me?

I wasn't sure what to do with myself, but grim stoicism had worked so far, so I simply stood my ground and said nothing. Hopefully I was safe, even if this was some new cape. Eventually the man reached me. He towered over even me, and stood just slightly too close for my liking. He stuck his hand out.

"Congratulations, comrade," he said. His voice was deep, and soft, and sounded like its owner was used to using it as a tool.

I took his hand. His grip was crushing – not crushing in a way that suggested he was trying to intimidate me, just that he was a big guy with big hands and a lot of power in them. "Thank you," I said, realising I hadn't replied.

He laughed softly. "I can see you're confused. I guess I'm not as infamous round these parts, huh? I'm Scrapyard. That's not the name I was given, but it's the one I use. I'm not going to ask you to give me your name, but I'm here to tell you you're not alone. There are other capes, like yourself, who've decided to make a difference in the world." He leaned forward and put a hand on my shoulder. " _Well done_. It's not often I hear about someone organising direct action like you did without my help. I was curious, so I decided to go incognito and stick around to see how it turned out. I was ready to step in when it got rough – but imagine my surprise when I saw another cape with things already in hand!"

I thought back. There _had_ been a few people who'd turned up and not immediately joined a group. I thought I'd have recognised someone this size, though. I had to ask. "Incognito?"

He gestured at his scarf. "Yes. Ironic, no? I put on the mask to conceal my identity, but when I want to conceal that I'm Scrapyard, all I have to do is take it off. Well, that and hunch over so that I'm merely 'big' and not 'massive', duck my head so it's hard to see my features, that sort of thing." Scrapyard lowered his voice conspiratorially. "There's a lesson there for you, comrade; no-one looks for a cape when they're not wearing a mask. Useful, especially for people like us who reject the traditional trappings of the so-called 'hero' and dress like what we are: people."

I said nothing for a moment, but glanced to the side, just for a moment. There were a lot of people around, and I didn't really have an idea of what to do with them. Apart from anything else, the cops tended to get anxious whenever a large group of folks who had reason to be angry with them gathered in one place. Also, I was pretty sure Galvanate would have reported in by now, and might try and bring the cops down on us out of spite. The dockworkers, at least, needed to leave and get back to their lives – we'd got what we came here for.

I looked up into Scrapyard's eyes. "We'll talk. The union, fifteen minutes. For now, disperse."

Scrapyard looked around as if noticing the crowd for the first time. "Ah. Retaliation, yes? Very well. Do you want to debrief them, or shall I?"

Since I didn't have a clue what he meant by 'debrief', I made a 'go ahead' gesture.

"If you're sure." Scrapyard raised his voice. "Gentlemen! For those of you who do not know me, I am Scrapyard. I am aware that I have a certain reputation. You know what those in power say about those who dare stand up and challenge their comfortable system, those who have the temerity to not only want the boot off our necks but to destroy the machinery of oppression altogether! Believe me when I say that I am here for you, here to help you!

"Today, you have taken the first step towards _real_ change, towards finally making a difference in the system that denies you the means to feed your family when the businessmen and politicians live in luxury off of our blood, sweat and tears! Did you not see the parasite who plays the direct role in keeping you down turn and run, helpless before your combined will and power? You know the truth now. When he or others like him try to fool you into thinking you are helpless, remember this day. Remember you can stand up! Remember you can unite! And above all, remember that _this_ is the way man was meant to live. Not a slave. Not forced to work away his days for meaningless tokens, his worth decided by men he never chose to place above him. Remember the day you said, 'No more!'"

There was a cheer from the crowd, even louder than the one I'd sparked by ending the chase against Galvanate. Or maybe that was just because everyone was looking in our direction. I felt their eyes on me. I _felt_ the hope.

Scrapyard held up a hand for quiet. Within moments, he had it. "Leave now. Return to your homes. But know that we may call on you again. When we do, I hope you show just as much courage and integrity as you have today. Thank you."

The cape dropped his hand, and walked away. He looked to be taking a circular route towards the union, to prevent being followed, maybe. I watched him go, followed at a respectful distance by those of the dockworkers who happened to live in that direction. There were a lot of questions I wanted to ask.

Guess I'd better get back to the union and ask them.

* * *

In fact, Scrapyard finally walked into Kenny Hong's office after almost half an hour. After he squeezed himself through the doorway, he seemed to fill the room – an impression not helped by the fact that, well, he literally did almost fill the room. Between him, me, and Kenny himself, there wasn't a lot of free space.

"Sorry," he said, taking off his cap. "I lost myself walking around your beautiful city. These docks do you credit – and of course I love to get to know a city by spending time on her streets."

"Yeah, thanks," groused Kenny. "So what are you here for, Scrapyard?"

The cape glanced at me, then turned to Kenny. "Like I told the kid, I heard you'd been having some issues with the fascists running the city, so I came to lend a hand. It _is_ my speciality."

Kenny glared. "We were _handling_ the issues."

"I'm sure Fred Morgan is glad to hear that." Scrapyard's voice wasn't loud.

The union head looked as though Scrapyard had slapped him. "How dare you-"

"I dare because your people need-"

"No, shut up. How _dare_ you! You do not get to swan into our city and invoke the name of a man who died when he shouldn't have had to! Fred wasn't an activist or one of your extremists, he was just a guy who wanted to help. And now, just like that, some miracle kid appears who might have some chance of actually making a difference in this city – and lo and behold, up you sprout to take advantage! Yeah, I know you, attaching yourself to good causes and turning them to violence and anarchy. If there's no trouble before you show up, there sure as hell will be after – you're no better than the fat cats we-"

 _THUD._

Scrapyard removed his fist from the drywall, and shook the dust from it. "Hm. That's usually somewhat more effective. Your gadget really is something special, kid." He shook his head, then said, "I get your point, Mr. Hong. But I am not obligated to take your every criticism on the chin, and I would remind you to _watch your fucking tone_."

Kenny shrank back into the corner, but opened his mouth to reply. Before he could, I decided to step in.

"Uh, I do sorta take issue with capes threatening normal folks," I put in. "That's, um, a big part of what little platform I've managed to figure out for myself. So, you know, back off or get used to a life without powers."

Both men blinked, and then Scrapyard chuckled. "Okay, okay. I apologise. This is your show, after all, not mine or Mr. Hong's. So, go ahead. You called me here – what did you want to talk about?"

"First question – I've gotten a bit from context, but, well, who are you?"

Kenny snorted. "An extremist. A supervillain."

Scrapyard corrected him gently. "A vigilante. I work to promote the rights of the working class, and build a foundation for true revolution. For obvious reasons, I work outside the law to do this, and I won't deny I've come into conflict with the so-called authorities. Change to the system cannot come from within, you know that, I'm sure. It's not like the politicians will vote to give themselves _less_ power, so the only route left is to take it back from them by force. Hence, I get labelled a 'supervillain' for challenging their status quo." He tilted his head. "So you really didn't know about me. I guess you're pretty new to this whole thing, huh? As involved as you are with your union, you'd definitely have heard about me sooner or later. So, how long have you been at this?"

I thought. The answer was almost embarrassing to say in front of an established cape like Scrapyard, no matter which side of the law he was on. "Three days."

I couldn't see Scrapyard's mouth under the scarf, but I got the impression it had just dropped open. "You mean, you've been involved with the union's fight against the mafia for three days, and you already went ahead and executed a plan to shut down one of their enforcers?"

"No," I said. "I mean I've literally been a cape for three days. But, um, most of that was building the device, once you account for the proof-of-concept, the development, the gathering of materials… I guess once you put it like that it does look like I was rushing it. Don't worry, I'm going to take a lot more time from now on, going to really think things through."

"Hold up," Kenny said. "I thought you'd developed that gadget of yours over- I don't know, months maybe. You come in, beat the hell out those goons like you've been doing it for years, and whip out your device to put Galvanate in his place, and now you tell me you're basically just some guy with some tricks? You're not an experienced cape?"

"I never claimed to be."

"Jesus." Kenny ran his hand through his hair. "Yikes, we got lucky. Holy crap, kid, I was following your lead throughout that whole thing. You mean to tell me you didn't have any kind of plan beyond 'run Galvanate out of the docks'?"

I winced. "I'm sorry. But I have a plan now. Or, um, the bare bones of one, I guess." I looked at Scrapyard. "You've done this before, a lot, right? Mobilising the workers, getting them to stand up for themselves."

The giant man nodded. "I have. Even before getting my powers, I knew there was nothing else I wanted to do."

"So help me. Show me the ropes of being a cape, of being an activist. I'm sure you have a few ideas as to how I can better use my abilities to make a change – I can make pretty much anything I put my mind to, but I don't know _what_ to make, or how to use it." I turned to the union leader. "And you, Kenny. This isn't going to work unless I have the support of the dockworkers. It's a movement that's going to start from the ground up, helped along by us capes, _not_ a couple of capes and their dockworker henchmen. I need you to keep me honest on this, and tell us what's best for your guys."

Kenny nodded. "I can do that."

"Oh, and if you can possibly help me out with a space to work, some materials when you can spare them, anything like that-"

"Say no more. Actually, you can use the basement here if you like. We mostly just use it as file storage, but, you know, everything's starting to shift onto computers these days. Before long we'll just have a filing cabinet full of those floppy discs and that'll be all we need. We can clear it out as soon as you like. Any materials or tools you want, as well, I'll see what I can do to get my hands on them. There's a whole lot of old equipment we can repurpose if we need to."

"Are you sure? I wouldn't want to put the union to any trouble."

"Trouble? Hah! Kid, you just ran off a mafia cape out for my head, and you're worried about causing me trouble? Tell you what, I'll hire you into the union, to keep the paper-pushers happy. Some random meaningless title, 'head of parahuman relations' or something like that, just so I can answer the vice-director when he calls to ask where the extra money's going."

I sighed in relief. With everything that'd been going on, the fact that I'd technically lost my job hadn't ranked all _that_ high on my list of priorities, but it was still nice to know that the union had my back on this. I liked bread and water, but I was in no hurry to live on them. "Great. That'll be real helpful. You won't regret it, I promise. Scrapyard? Are you willing to help?"

The man spread his hands. "How can I refuse? I genuinely believe you are the most exciting thing to come along in cape politics since Scar. There's no way I'll miss it."

"Thank you. I plan to do a lot more self-diagnostics later on, and really get to grips with my powers, but is there anything you can tell me to point me in the right direction?"

Scrapyard put his hand to his chin in thought. "Hm. Well, obviously my powers aren't the same as yours – in fact, with each year it's looking more and more likely that _no_ two parahumans have the exact same power. But there are categories of sorts, and it's pretty clear that you're one of the super-science capes. Specifically, your abilities relate to understanding, designing, and building highly advanced technology, without being overly constrained by resources, prior knowledge, or occasionally physics. Basically, you don't do amazing and impossible things, you _make_ amazing and impossible things."

He chuckled, then added, "By the way, is there a particular category of things you're _especially_ good at making? Or maybe a specific method of construction? In your case, for example, it might be objects with an area of effect, or objects used to overturn established order, or objects made using improvised items. Do any of those sound right?"

"Not really. Why?"

Scrapyard made a non-committal noise. "Hm. Well, it might be nothing, but there's a theory going round the cape community that _all_ super-science capes have one of these specialisations, some theme which their powers are geared towards. Anything made within that theme will be far beyond what even another science cape can do, anything tangentially connected will be amazing but not _incredibly_ so, and anything entirely outside its purview will be barely better than, say, what regular scientists can achieve in about ten years. Have you encountered anything like that?"

Now that he mentioned it… yeah. I really had. My brain was a constant fountain of ideas, but some of them were, I don't know, muffled somehow, waiting for more information. And others just refused to come at all. Like, okay, this was a serious situation I was in, and powers were a heavy burden and all that, but ever since I'd realised I was a super-science cape, I'd wanted to build a phaser, just to say I'd done it. I hadn't had time, obviously, and if I had I thought I'd be able to resist the temptation, but… my brain hadn't given me anything. Nothing that was at all like a phaser, or a death ray, or anything along those lines. It was like I'd never gotten powers at all, as far as building myself a phaser was concerned.

I mean, I was more of a fantasy guy than sci-fi, but still.

But for something like my power-jammer, I had to actively block out the endless stream of ideas and innovations and improvements, or else I'd never be able to focus. When I'd contemplated ways to hunt down Galvanate at his home, it was the same – the hardest part would be choosing which idea to take forward.

So yeah, I knew what Scrapyard was talking about.

"I guess..." I started, "if I did have one of these specialisations, it might be something like 'objects that relate to superpowers'? Or maybe 'objects that regulate superpowers'? That's not quite right, but I guess it'd be something like that."

That… seemed right. In fact, if the little buzz of ideas I got when I thought of what might fit under 'devices that manipulated superpowers' was any indication, it _was_ right. But, hang on. What about the miniature generator idea I'd been kicking around, that felt as though it had a piece missing? That wasn't just _not there_ like the ideas for a phaser, but neither was it immediately available like the power-jammer had been. What _was_ my brain missing that might allow me to make the connection and have it as intuitive as the other ideas I'd had?

I rephrased the problem. What property of superpowers might allow me to create a generator? Some extra-dimensional energy store, that I blocked off using my power-jammer? Possibly – there was certainly something to that idea, but it wasn't everything. And in any case, there was no reason the energy would manifest itself as electricity. It was the energy most accessible to humans, but I doubted whatever weird physics governed superpowers cared about that.

Actually, what _did_ decide which energy a cape used, if he used energy? I ran down a mental list of energy-using capes, off the top of my head. Eidolon – anything he wanted, natch. Legend – also pretty much anything he wanted. V2 – radiation, although what type I wasn't sure. Galvanate -

Oh.

"Scrapyard, I might also need your help in getting hold of someone Galvanate's empowered for study. I need to see how his minions generate electricity, and possibly watch them do it. Actually, while I'm at it, I'd also like to have a look at how the invulnerability works. _Actually_ , Galvanate's ability to grant parahuman powers to someone who didn't have any to start with is more interesting than both of those..." I noticed both Kenny and Scrapyard giving me looks, and coughed. "Sorry, I just realised something about my powers. Anyway. Can I count on you to be a research assistant when necessary?"

Scrapyard nodded. "Of course. Although fair warning, paper-pushing is not my strong suit, and I imagine it's not yours either."

"I can find a secretary or something," Kenny put in.

"Okay. Okay."

"If that's all?" asked Scrapyard. I nodded, and he left, with a brief nod to the both of us. I yawned, and rubbed my head. Mortal peril was more tiring than I'd thought it might be, and so was managing grown men half my age again. At least after the fact. "Well, I might head home and… well, I was going to say 'turn in', but being honest I'm probably going to tinker with my devices until three in the morning and try and come up with new ideas. Kenny, thank you again for today. I'll come round tomorrow afternoon and see if that basement's ready?"

"Sounds good," said Kenny. As I went to follow Scrapyard, Kenny called out. "Oh, one more thing." I stopped, then took up the cape's position standing by the door. The union leader rummaged in his drawers. "I know I had it here somewhere… ah." He withdrew a slightly aged newspaper cutting, and put it on his desk, facing me. I looked.

The headline was ' **Violent Protest Leaves** **Four** **Dead** '. There was a photograph, showing a bunch of protesters fighting a group of cops. Front and centre was an unmistakable figure I now knew to be Scrapyard. He was holding an armoured riot cop in the air by the neck with one hand, and pushing one of his fellow protesters forward with the other. I looked up at Kenny.

"I saved that photo because it's got me in it – can you see, just there by the corner? - but I'm glad I did, because it's something you need to see. When I started becoming politically active, this group was based around boycotts of firms who still used company scrip to pay employees. Within three months of that lunatic coming along, we were fighting cops and burning down offices. This protest was where I realised I wanted to get off the ride. I moved down here and started working for the union – to promote workers rights the _safe_ way. The way that _actually_ works, by incremental change and a slow shift of opinion, rather than some glorious revolution.

"This is what Scrapyard does, kid. He attaches himself to organisations based around his pet causes and turns them to extremism, anarchy, and violence. Worse, he's _very_ good at what he does. I'm sure you saw, he's got that charisma that makes people want to follow him and impress him. Give him his due, he's not stupid either – he makes sure to keep up with local, national, and international political news, all the better to rile up his followers. And he's been a cape longer than a lot of the heroes trying to stop him, so he's acquired a certain amount of canniness by virtue of experience. Hell, he might have been an actual soldier at some point, I don't even know."

I glanced through the article. Apparently, one of those killed was a cop – beaten to death by Scrapyard himself. The other three had all been shot by police. There'd been a slew of other injuries as well, from various beatings, tramplings, gunshot wounds… if I closed my eyes I could almost hear it. Only then I realised I was imagining the crackle of electricity, and that what I was hearing was Galvanate's strikebreaking. I still wasn't sure on the difference between the two. Except Galvanate never claimed to serve and protect the people he ordered beaten up. Or was that just the LAPD? Gah, I couldn't remember.

"So you think I shouldn't associate with Scrapyard?" I asked, mostly to clear my head.

"I think you should be _very careful_. If the Dockworkers Association had their own cape you could learn from and do your research on, I'd have told you to use them instead, but we don't. I agree with you that your particular powerset means a parahuman subject to do tests on is a must, but… maybe take everything Scrapyard says with a pinch of salt if it's political." He sighed. "Unfortunately, everything is political with that guy. Just promise you won't go off the deep end, okay? You seem like a good kid, and I don't want to see you turned into some bitter terrorist before you're twenty-five."

"I'll… see what I can do."

"I'd appreciate it. If that's all, can you clear out of my office? I'm going to need to ring round and pacify a bunch of managers whose workers just skipped to engage in, technically, gang violence. So if you'll excuse me..." He put the news clipping away, and started to rummage around his desk again.

I made my way home, a lot on my mind. Eventually I managed to lose myself in the trance-like state brought on by tinkering with my tech, but it took longer than it usually would.

* * *

The woman known to her closest confidantes as 'Doctor Mother' was interrupted in her bath by a knock on the door. She paused, and exchanged a look with her rubber duck. There was only one person who should have been able to access her house, located as it was on an otherwise deserted planet, but she usually had the, well, foresight, to call ahead.

"Contessa?" she called.

The door opened, and the Doctor's… daughter? Ward? Companion? Contessa walked in. Black slacks, white shirt, as usual, the jacket and tie removed while indoors. Contessa had never really gotten the hang of modern fashions, and therefore dressed so that she had to think about it as little as possible. A simple black suit was appropriate anywhere, and looked professional.

"Sorry for interrupting you, Doctor," Contessa said. "Something's come up. Another blind spot's appeared. I didn't notice until just now, but it's almost impossible to ignore now that I have."

The Doctor sighed. This probably wasn't the kind of conversation one could have in the bath. Regretfully, she stood up and pulled on her bathrobe. "Oh dear. Are you sure it's not an interaction with some new power David's trying out?"

Contessa nodded. "Quite sure. I know him well enough by now to have an idea of how a hypothetical version of him would act, and that gets around that particular blind spot. It does nothing to this one – paths that relate to it simply end in… fuzz. And the more I think about it, the more I want to account for it in the path, and then the path ends, so it's quite distracting. Also, it's a lot more stationary than the shadow cast by David, or by the Warrior. It's confined to an area rather than a person, so far as I can tell, but that area is growing by the day, and the further along the path it gets the larger the blind spot is."

That was worrying. Contessa was something of an unbeatable trump card in the Doctor's efforts to control the course of parahuman history towards the end of stopping the Warrior. No matter what new cape might come along and tip over the gameboard, no matter what blowhard politician might try and sterilise the cape world with reactionary laws, the Doctor could rest easy knowing that the girl she'd met in the crater could deal with them. Eidolon had been a minor source of concern at first, but he was loyal enough that she'd largely relaxed, and if Contessa was right even that was no longer an issue.

This new blind spot was extremely worrying. If the only other things Contessa couldn't see were Eidolon and the Warrior himself, that was a disturbing precedent for the power level needed to defeat her foresight. And it was growing? Defeating her trump card, inch by inch? The Doctor rubbed the bridge of her nose. It was times like this she wished she actually was the strategist she played the role of.

"Have you been able to tell where this area is?"

"Yes. I asked the Clairvoyant to look at a particular set of co-ordinates, and it turned out that he was unable. Just an expanse of blankness at that point and a couple of metres around. From looking outside the area of effect, though, it's in the Northeast USA. Brockton Bay, specifically the docks."

"Brockton… I don't think we have anything going on there. Or any plans to, really. Should we play it safe and erase the whole city from the map, or will a targeted strike be enough, do you think?" The Doctor's brain caught up to what she'd just said, and some part of her shuddered. If you'd told her seven years ago she would be, _could_ be, the type of person to casually discuss mass murder, she'd have, well, not laughed in your face, because the idea was sickening. She'd probably wonder what kind of messed-up world it would have to be for her to fall that far.

As it turned out, you only had to fight one monster before becoming one yourself.

Still. It _was_ for the greater good. It sounded like an excuse, but, well, if the good _actually was_ greater, weren't you doing the right thing by default? When the alternative was to watch your species burn, and know that you could have saved them all? If only you'd been less squeamish, less willing to put lives on a scale and declare that five billion was no larger a number than five hundred thousand, or than fifty, and call your lack of perspective morality… the Doctor had heard Contessa wake up screaming at night when she was younger, tormented by visions of the apocalypse that might still come. She'd pressed for details, gently, because the task she'd taken on meant she had to know, and comforted the crying girl with the fact that the world had not yet fallen to alien gods. It sounded awful to just let an entire city die, but compared to letting an entire _planet_ die… well, the Doctor knew which one she'd rather do. At the very least, she'd know that she'd _tried_.

Which was why she was surprised when she realised Contessa was shaking her head. "No? We're not removing this one?"

"The paths which lead to creating the largest and strongest army of parahumans possible, or the path to the most effective weapons to use against something like the Warrior, all end in fuzz now. Whichever way I ask the question, I only get a path that leads into the blind spot. It's just a feeling, but I think whatever's causing this, we need it to beat him. If I had to guess… and I suppose I _do_ have to guess… I think this is a new parahuman, someone we can recruit."

Oh. Well then. "Alright. So why come to me? You of all people don't need me to tell you what to do. Just go there and work your persuasive magic on this new parahuman."

"I _can't_. It's a blind spot, and it's growing. At the moment it's just affecting the paths that lead there. If I go in? Every path is going to go straight to fuzz immediately, because all my plans start with myself. I'll be powerless. _Powerless_ , do you understand, Doctor? I have no idea how to act in your world if I can't cheat and use the path to victory. I can't even understand half of the technology your world takes for granted if the knowledge were to stop dropping straight into my head. I don't even speak your language, not really! How can I even begin to deal with the problem if I can't even ask questions to find out what's going on? No, whoever goes in, it can't be me. It has to be someone who is genuinely persuasive, someone who can go undercover and find out what this blind spot is, someone who's _actually_ smart and not just looking at the answers. I think you have someone in mind."

Persuasive. But then, Contessa always was. In fact, it was the only way she'd known how to speak to the Doctor, or anyone else from her world, at first. She wanted to communicate an idea, so her power supplied the words and tone and body language, all with perfect diction and timing, and never mind that the girl who had been Fortuna didn't actually know the meaning of half of them. When she wanted to convince someone of an idea, she'd pick the exact words she needed to convince them. For the Doctor, she didn't even bother half the time, just stated her position knowing that the Doctor knew arguing was futile. It saved time, but freaked the Doctor out, so often she _did_ go through the motions, like just now. Of course, in the end Contessa always got her way regardless.

The Doctor nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, I do have someone who would be perfect for such a job, now that you mention it. I had other plans for her, but, well, the Triumvirate plan can still go ahead without her. It's a shame, though, she was doing so well building a reputation for herself as a hero."

"This is more important," Contessa said flatly. "Hero, Legend, Eidolon, there's your triumvirate. I'll go and pitch the idea myself. But we _need_ Rebecca in on this. She's the only one obscure enough, both in powers and appearance, that she can pull off an infiltration."

"Well, I'd be a fool not to rely on your advice, of course. It's settled, then, we'll send Rebecca to this Brockton Bay place. Would you like to stay for the night, Contessa? I keep your room ready, teddy bear and all." The Doctor smiled.

Contessa fidgeted. "Well, I had some things to do… but I guess I can put them off."

"Glad to hear it. I'll go and make dinner." The Doctor stepped into her slippers and padded down the stairs, he foster daughter following behind. She remembered something, and smirked. "Oh, and if you want a bath, I'm afraid I've used up all the hot water."

" _Doctor!"_ came the plaintive whine from behind.

Heh. It only ever came about through luck, but it was always nice when circumstances conspired such that the Doctor could remind her charge that she was human too, and not just a magic get-whatever-you-want-whenever machine, her thoughts on Contessa's borderline mind-control powers notwithstanding. Her girl had become much too robotic of late, too caught up in world-shattering events and secret conspiracies and sorely in need of the trials and tribulations that _normal_ girls ,faced when they came home to their families. She was Doctor _Mother_ after all.


	4. Chapter 4 - Cooperative

Tony Mancini could hear his father's raised voice from the other side of the house. And it wasn't some poky shithole like you'd find downtown or in the Docks; no, the Mancini family deserved the best, and their estate just outside of Brockton looked like a small castle. Tony spent most of his time in his apartment in the city proper, but his father had called him here, so he had no choice but to come in and work his way through the wine cellar while he waited for Francesco Mancini to finish dressing down his subordinates.

It looked like it might take a while, so he picked up one of the newspapers on the coffee table. He flipped through it absent-mindedly. Legend reportedly seen meeting with Eidolon again, ongoing destabilisation in China, the Dockworker's Association going on strike again – hadn't they just gone _off_ -strike just last week? – yet another opinion piece on how the government should respond to rising numbers of capes. Tony read that one more carefully. Apparently there was talk of putting together some kind of new government department specifically to deal with parahumans, along with its own specially-trained police force, to work in parallel to the regular police force in dealing with cape threats. The article's author was of the opinion that the proposed 'Parahuman Response Team' should simply be folded into the regular police, like an extra SWAT branch, since the extra cost of creating new departments and protocols was likely to delay the formation of this 'PRT' by a couple of years at least. Tony snorted, and tossed the paper down. He nodded to a couple of bodyguards on their way to the kitchen.

When he was little, he'd wondered why there'd always been so many people going in and out of his house at all hours. Family was one thing – Tony had three uncles and an aunt, and about a million cousins of one kind or another, so the guest room was pretty constantly in use. That was fine. Family was important. But then there were those other men, the ones with the hard looks in their eyes and guns close to hand, and they'd been constantly in and out as well. His mother had told him to take no notice, and so he hadn't looked too hard, but inevitably he'd just sort of absorbed the fact that his family wasn't normal.

Tony had never had a lot of trouble making friends. Everyone at school seemed to go out of their way to be nice to him. He made sure to appear grateful and gracious and generous, although he still privately thought that his popularity was nothing more than his due. He'd been to the other kids' houses, for birthday parties and confirmations and various christenings, and while they were nice – his parents weren't about to let their boy hang around with just anyone, after all – there was a noticeable gap between how Tony lived and how they lived. He never made a big thing of it, but he was glad his family was better off than others.

When, at fourteen, he'd plucked up the courage to ask his father about why they were so much richer than his friends, the old man had just laughed, poured him a glass of brandy that had sent little Tony dizzy and made his eyes water, and explained. Francesco Mancini was the head of the Brockton branch of the Mancini crime family, ruled from New York by Guiseppe Mancini, who had never ever refused little Tony a ride on his grandfather's shoulders and had personally killed over twenty men. Giuseppe had arrived from Italy with fifteen dollars and the clothes on his back, and now each and every one of his grandchildren lived like kings. That, explained Francesco, was what it was all about in the end – providing for your family, and protecting you and yours from anything the world might throw at them.

Ever since that day, Tony had wanted nothing more than to be a part of the family business. He wanted to be his grandfather, who nowadays spent half his time in a Sicilian villa surrounded by grandchildren and did pretty much whatever the hell he wanted, the uncontested patriarch of an entire army of sons, daughters, in-laws, nephews, grandchildren, and extended relations. Tony wanted a family of his own to protect and cherish, and retire to some sunny place and let his own grandkids run around on the lawn. He wanted that.

But until then, he was going to have to put in a lot of hard work, because you couldn't expect something to come from nothing, even with family. So he'd gone to college, come back with a business degree and set out working for his father, who in turn had started involving Tony in the family enterprises. Tony hadn't wanted to accept too much help from his father, but he couldn't deny the old man's contacts and influence were useful while he was just getting started.

The downside, of course, was that he was on call whenever his dad needed him. Still, he seemed to be winding down, so Tony finished his glass of red, stood up from the couch, and made his way across the house to his father's study.

Francesco Mancini was a man who believed in making an impression. He was also a man who had a lot of money and wasn't shy about using it. His study, therefore, was a richly decked-out affair, done in that timeless wood-panelling-and-brass-highlights style. Pride of place was the man's desk, which was about the size of a car and was positioned _just slightly_ off-centre in the room, so that a visitor felt he had less space than he actually did.

It was a room designed to intimidate, and it might have worked on Tony if he didn't have memories of leaping from table to table in this very room and pretending the Persian rug on the floor was lava.

His father stood up as he entered. "Hey, Tony. Take a seat."

Tony did so, relaxing not into the hard-backed chair in front of the desk but in one of the armchairs he'd had a lot of fun jumping up and down on when he was six. "What's this about, dad?"

Francesco snorted. "It's about this business with that coward Galvanate, and the docks. I've just asked the boys, and no-one's seen hide nor hair of him or his little brown-nosers in about a week. Can you imagine the nerve of the man? Bad enough he's slacking off his work for us, bad enough he's just shitting himself in some hole instead of taking care of his own problem like a man, but it seems he spread some rumours before he fucked off. See, from what I can tell the last place he went before all this was the Docks – you remember he saw off that rabble of ungrateful assholes?"

Tony nodded. He honestly hadn't been paying attention to what Galvanate had been doing, but he wasn't about to tell that to his father.

"Right, so a few days after that he just ups and vanishes. But what just found out was that he left a message to every cape on the payroll. Did you see it?"

Tony shook his head. "Nope. Not heard nothing from Galvanate."

"Huh. You'd think if he was getting word round to all our capes he wouldn't leave you out. I spent enough money making you into one, God's truth… eh, anyway. Seems he was telling our boys not to mess with the Docks, or the dockworkers, until he sent word. Something about some new cape they have, can shut off powers or some bullshit."

"You believe him?"

"The fuck I do. Galvanate's been itching to strike out by himself for years, that's no secret. Now he's using the fact he got his ass kicked somehow as his excuse. I just didn't think he'd be stupid enough to try and grab all my capes when he went, though. Must be why he didn't bother to try his bullshit on you. Ain't no-one can break up the Mancinis, that right, boy?"

"You got it, dad," Tony said automatically.

"Damn right. Look, I know you've been wanting a little more responsibility on the business side of things. You've been damn patient, and I want you to know that I've seen you. Well, here's an opportunity to show what you're made of when you're left by yourself. See, Galvanate jumping ship has left us all in the shit regarding the Docks."

"The strike?" Tony asked, just to show he was listening.

"You got it. Now, that particular horse has left the stable. I'm told the shipping companies are going to agree to the union's demands, thanks to that boyscout Stansfield, and once that's done even I can't reverse it. Or it won't be worth the trouble, anyway. So we gotta take this one on the chin, and deal with the increased overheads somehow. But I don't want to see this happening again, we clear? Tony, I need you to whip the docks into shape. Remind them who _really_ makes the decisions in this town. It ain't the politicos, it ain't the capes, it sure as shit ain't a bunch of grimy blue-collar dipshits who wouldn't know a smart financial decision if it bit them in the ass. It's _us_. The Mancinis! Am I right?"

"You're right, dad. How are you gonna know that I'm done with the dockworkers? You got some kinda goal in mind?"

Francesco Mancini looked his son in the eye. "You tell me. You got a suggestion?"

Tony thought. He stood up from his chair, and walked over to the desk. As he'd thought, the papers on top were those dealing with the business going into and out of the Docks. That was his dad, eye always on the ball.

"The most important things we got going on in the Docks are the smuggling operations," Tony started. "We earn a bit from simple shares in the shipping companies, and a bit more from protection in the area, but the main reason we need the docks at all is that we can bring in drugs, weapons, and contraband without having to jump through too many hoops." He gestured to a stack of papers on his father's desk that showed a list of deliveries, month by month.

He'd had a quick look at sheets like these before. One name that jumped out often was the _Santa Ferrero,_ the Mancini's own ship. This was crewed by the most trusted of the Mancini family's retainers, and officially carried cane sugar. It did that, but it also ferried anything that the Mancinis really needed to get somewhere safely. New samples of drugs, stolen goods yet to be fenced, even a few human prisoners. If it caused misery, it had been carried on the _Santa Ferrero_. It was a regular at Lord's Port, and relied on the mafia's iron grip on the customs officers to stay below the radar. "Now, as it stands, with the dockworkers all jumped up and righteous, our deliveries are gonna be held up, or stalled altogether. So how about, when we get the next three deliveries in without a hitch, we call the dockworkers cowed and my job done?"

Tony's dad clapped him on the shoulder over the desk. It had used to almost knock him over. Now it felt like what it was – an acknowledgement between equals. Tony smiled. He felt more like a Mancini than he ever had. Or rather, he felt like he understood what that meant, _really_ understood for the first time.

Yeah, he was going up in the world. He was a Mancini. Who were these dockworkers to stand in his way?

* * *

Two years wasn't _that_ long to use a different name. Even so, the girl standing outside the Dockworkers Association felt distinctly peculiar that she was merely Rebecca Costa-Brown and not Alexandria.

To be sure, 'Rebecca Costa-Brown' came with fine references and accolades, not to mention letters of introduction, enough that her going in to apply for the position of (ugh) secretary at this union was all but a formality. All faked, of course. Rebecca didn't care to know exactly how it had all been done, she wasn't the type to go in for official intrigue. She suspected Contessa had done most of it. Sometimes she thought she'd never stop being surprised at the other girl's capabilities.

Even so. She'd spent the last couple of years slowly building a reputation for herself as a superhero, and the Doctor now wanted her to waste her time doing random drudgery undercover? It felt… well, it was arrogant to say so, but it felt beneath her. Maybe she was being unfair. The Doctor had impressed on her the importance of this theorised cape.

Her appointment was at half past three, and it was now 15:27 and forty seconds. Rebecca hadn't looked at her watch, for the same reason she hadn't bothered referring to the map when finding the place, but it was time.

The receptionist looked up as she came in, but didn't say anything. Rebecca decided to make the first move.

"Hi there. I'm Rebecca Costa-Brown, I had an appointment for half past three. The secretary vacancy?"

"Oh! Right, yes, I'd clean forgotten you were coming in." Rebecca was very good at controlling her reactions these days, so she didn't roll her eyes while the receptionist rummaged through some papers. Eventually she found what she was looking for, some form or other, and handed it to Rebecca. "Okay, we need your name, address, contact number and date of birth, along with your social security number and signature here. I know we've got all this from your covering letter from HQ, but it needs to be done again, because reasons, right? It's mainly for records and so we can pick your information out of the pool of, um, three candidates we have."

Rebecca filled in her information. "Why so few?" she asked absently.

"Well, you know, it's all a bit mysterious, you know?" The receptionist leaned forward conspiratorially, and lowered her voice. "It's an entirely new office – new position, I mean, not physical office, although the basement's been refurbished for it I think – and no-one's really sure what it's supposed to be for. Parahuman relations, what even _is_ that? But the new head of parahuman relations just started showing up around the place about a week ago, and he's got Mr Hong's approval, so I guess I must have just missed the memo. Anyway, they didn't advertise it very well. Or, you know, pretty much at all."

15:29 and three seconds. It was looking like her interview would be late, but you couldn't blame people for not keeping perfect time inside their heads. And she couldn't exactly storm out for being kept waiting even if she was here all afternoon. May as well get a little information on who she'd be working for, although with her powers her _real_ job would keep her a lot busier than the five minutes it'd take her to sort through this guy's paperwork. "So what's the new head like? Should I be running for the hills?" She flashed a practised smile.

The receptionist shook her head, earrings jangling. "Oh, no, Mr Hebert's really nice! It's just, he's _really_ young to be a head, even if it is of some weird made-up department, and he doesn't seem all that experienced, and he kind of always looks like he wants to be somewhere else when he's talking to you. But, yeah, he's a really great guy, totally committed to what we're about."

Well. That was interesting. With the knowledge that a cape was operating within or around the building, even more so. Even a new cape could quite easily put pressure on someone to get access to an organisation beyond what they would usually have, even if they weren't the mind-control type, although why anyone would attempt it with a union was beyond her. (Rebecca studiously ignored the note of irony associated with this last thought.) If he really was committed to the union ideals like the receptionist said, then maybe he'd been working there or at least sympathetic before triggering. Rebecca made a mental note to get as much information from this 'Mr Hebert' as she could, and also to ask the Doctor to pull up any records available.

All this flashed through her head in an instant. Rebecca was good at thinking on her feet. Or off of them, come to that.

"Oh, that's good to hear," she said, with barely a break in the conversation. "So he's a local guy, is he? Any idea what he was like before he started working here?" That one earned her a look, which she supposed she deserved for fishing so obviously. "Hey, I'm just trying to get a head start before I go in!" she defended herself. "I've not exactly had a lot of experience at interviews."

"Just relax, hon, you'll do great. Just try and rememb-" The receptionist was cut off by the door behind her opening, and a man sticking his head through the gap. They exchanged a few words, which Rebecca couldn't hear, and then the man disappeared and the receptionist turned back to Rebecca. "Okay, I'm to send you through to Mr Hebert. He's using conference room two, it's through that door, down the hall, second right, up one flight and then it's, um, five doors down and kind of over on the left. Um, actually maybe I should take you there myself-"

"Don't worry, I got it," Rebecca said. "Thank you for your help."

"Good luck!"

The union building was… well, it wasn't up to Rebecca's standards, that was for sure. It was clean enough, but clearly in disrepair and underfunded. Also, it was a bit gloomy – even the stairwell was dim, with the large if grimy windows doing nothing more than offer a better view of the iron-grey sky outside. Rebecca, who'd grown up in Los Angeles, regarded them with outright suspicion.

Up the stairs, four doors down, there wasn't anything kind of on the left but she made a guess and came face to face with a bunch of people on typewriters who clearly weren't Mr Hebert waiting for an interview. Rebecca blinked, and reviewed her mental map. Four doors down, right – no, not right. Had it been four? Five? Maybe six? She couldn't remember. It might have been a better plan to let the receptionist take her after all-

 _She couldn't remember_.

Rebecca had had a photographic memory for two years. There was _no way_ she'd forget something even as trivial as a set of directions. She'd surprised the Doctor by leading the way through her labyrinth of a laboratory on her second visit, had thrown away her address book after it became clear that she wasn't going to need one, ever. So why the hell was she having trouble finding her way around this stupid poxy office?

"Uh," she started, "I'm looking for conference room three? No, two. Definitely two." Dammit! She hadn't bothered to actually try and memorize the room or the directions, because she hadn't _needed_ to try before. How did other people get things done all the time?

"No worries, miss," said one of the typists. "You're almost there, just head out the door and turn left and there'll be a sign. Can't miss it."

"Okaythankyou," said Rebecca, and fled, tripping over a table on her way out. What the hell was going on? Contessa had said she and the Clairvoyant had a blind spot, but she hadn't expected _this_. She felt like she was trying to think through cotton wool, her body felt like it was made out of lead, she was as uncoordinated as a teenager. _Her powers were gone_. Rebecca very nearly outright panicked at the realisation.

She was honestly thinking about just leaving the building by the nearest available exit, and at this point even the windows counted. But… well, she wasn't _actually_ in any danger. Nothing suggested that this unknown power-stealing cape was hostile, and no-one knew her as anything other than mild-mannered secretary, Rebecca Costa-Brown. And she couldn't deny that this kind of thing was _exactly_ what Cauldron needed to know about. Probably this cape couldn't do anything about Scion. But they needed to investigate anyway, because they had no other option.

On with the show, then.

The room was signposted, and indeed she couldn't miss it. Rebecca swallowed her lingering nervousness, and knocked.

"Come in!"

The room was, like the building, a bit shabby and in need of a coat of paint, window clean, refurbish, carpet lift, fumigation, and possibly an exorcism. Still, they'd clearly made an effort to tidy up. The room was dominated by one large table, at one end of which sat a man fiddling with something that looked a bit like a pager. Bits of wire and electronics were scattered over the table.

Rebecca had been warned, but wow, he really did look young. Around her own age, in fact. He was one of those people to which the word 'beanpole' seemed to naturally apply itself, tall and slim and, well sort of geeky-looking. The words 'departmental head' did not fit quite as well. He wasn't wearing a suit, or even smart casual, but rather jeans and a faded red hoodie, with a red and white checked scarf around his neck. Frankly he made Rebecca feel overdressed, in her smart office wear. Clearly, he wasn't comfortable in the office environment – which, from Rebecca's experience, was another signal flag of a cape. Odds were this was the guy. He glanced up when Rebecca entered.

"Yes?"

"I'm here for an interview? The secretary position?" Rebecca said.

"Oh! Right, my half past three! Sorry, I," the man glanced down at whatever he'd been fiddling with, "lost track of time. My bad. Right, interview." He stood up and shook Rebecca's hand. "I'm Danny Hebert. They call me 'head of parahuman relations', but as you'd find out if you start working under me, that's just a bullshit title to keep the paperwork gods happy."

Rebecca was trying to remember just how much force to put into a handshake when you had the proportionate strength of a sixteen-year-old girl, but managed, "Rebecca Costa-Brown. So if you're not really head of parahuman relations, what are you?"

Danny spread his hands. "As you've probably guessed, I'm a cape."

Oh, she'd guessed all right. Now, how did normal people react? "Oh, really?" she said. "Wow! I don't think I've ever actually met a cape before. What can you do?" Now just to get him to confirm that he had some kind of power-nullifying aura, and her job was almost done! Wow, this was an easy one.

Danny smiled. "I'm meant to be interviewing you, you know? Oh, whatever, I don't mind. You can think of me as a cheap knockoff of Hero. You know, the super-science cape? I can also build weird gadgets and things, but I'm a lot less intelligent than he is and I think I've got a couple of restrictions he doesn't have. Still, I'm glad for my gift if it'll allow me to help people."

That'd be the 'committed to our values' part. And also, _holy crap what_? Not a power-nullifier, a _tinker_ who could reproduce that effect? Even if that was the only thing he was capable of, that was… game-changing. And tinkers were never that simple. Okay, there was no way she was just referring this to the Doctor and letting her abduct Danny Hebert. He was _way_ too valuable not to try and convince to help of his own free will.

Hell, if what he said was true, he was in this game to help people anyway. His heart was clearly in the right place – and the arguments that worked so well on Alexandria should work just as well on Danny Hebert. Except she couldn't cheat and pull the combination of words that would best convince him out of thin air. And she couldn't just start spouting unbelievable things about Scion and the Apocalypse. She would have to do this the long way after all.

...well, there was nothing wrong with that.

Rebecca smoothed her hair back, letting nothing of her thoughts show on her face. "So if you're not really a department head, what do you need a secretary for?"

Danny began to fiddle with his pager again. "Well, it's more a personal assistant position. Or research assistant, to be honest. I can build a whole lot of things I never even imagined. But I don't know what I should build, and I don't know what I'll need to do it day to day. I basically need another head – someone to offer ideas when necessary, keep their finger on the pulse of what's happening in the wider world, deal with acquiring resources. Pretty much, I'll make the incredible machines, you take care of everything else.

"You'll be paid, obviously. The whole reason we're going through the rigmarole of calling me the head of parahuman relations is so that we can put through the paysheets and have a reasonable explanation for why we're here in the first place. I guess the work is pretty exciting as well, if you like cape stuff. We've got another cape working with me, but… uh, fair warning, he's kind of intense. Oh, but don't worry, you'll be perfectly safe. Actually, I'll be kitting you out so that you're theoretically perfectly safe from any cape, so consider that a perk."

"Sounds great," Rebecca said honestly. "I assume you need to see transcripts and things?"

Danny scratched his head. "Man, maybe? I'll be honest, I have no idea how to conduct an interview. Oh, screw it. You have a good head for numbers and figures?"

"Yep." Well, usually. With luck she'd be able to work from home or something, so she could do it when her brain wasn't reduced to the crawl of (shudder) normality.

"Can you slog through paperwork?"

"No worries."

"Great, great. Last question then." Danny's eyes met her own, and he placed his hands flat on the table. "Why on earth do you want to work for us?"

Rebecca blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"With your grades, your experience, you could work for anyone you chose, work your way up the corporate ladder, make something of yourself. You can certainly do better than some union in some no-name town like Brockton. Even then, you've moved clear across the country to be here. Why? What's the point?"

Yikes. He made good points. It was easy to forget that 'tinker' didn't mean 'genius'. They had advanced knowledge of technology, and within their speciality were capable of leaps of intuition even she was impressed by. Otherwise, they weren't necessarily smarter than anyone else. But that didn't mean they were stupid, either.

Rebecca would have to tread carefully. Luckily, as far as Danny was concerned she was just some girl in odd circumstances, nothing more suspicious. He certainly hadn't made the connection to the up-and-coming cape Alexandria. Well, she would just have to come up with something plausible.

"...you're right, there's a story behind me," she began. She made sure to keep careful eye contact – liars usually dropped their gaze. "It might be the wrong thing to say at interview, but I'd rather not get into what brought me across the country. But as to why I want to work here? I like helping people, making a difference. You say I'm going to be some kind of research assistant, and I'm all on board for that. But even if it was a secretary job, I'd take it because I want to feel like I'm doing something real. Like I'm contributing in some tangible way." Good so far. Admittedly, she was wracking her brains for memories of her background research for this job and a high school political science class for what it was that a union actually did. Needless to say, it hadn't had much relevance to her before.

"There are people who've not had a fair shake in life, and I know what that's like." God, did she ever. "Your job is to help them out and stand up for them, and if I can be a part of that… well, that's all I can ask of a job, I think." There. That was pretty much all she could do.

Danny shrugged and leaned back. "Fair enough. That was what I wanted to hear from you. This isn't just a job, you see, we're trying to make a change… well, if you don't get it now, you will in a week or two."

He nodded to himself sharply, and stood up. Rebecca stood up too, and took his offered hand.

"Welcome to the Dockworkers Association, Rebecca Costa-Brown. It's a pleasure to have… gifted individuals like yourself interested in our work."

* * *

Two men had been following Kenny Hong ever since he'd left the union to go home for the night. He hadn't been sure at first, but now he was actually outside his apartment block and they were still there, although now that he'd stopped they'd both stepped into an alley for a smoke. When they passed under a streetlight Kenny had gotten a good look at them. Both wore black trousers and boots with a plain white t-shirt. Both had shaven heads. Both were white.

Fuck. First the mafia, then that tinker kid, then that lunatic Scrapyard showing up, and now Empire Eighty Eight on top of everything else? Kenny knew that his appointment to regional head of the Dockworkers Association had pissed them off. There were quite a few among the dockworkers sympathetic to the racists' promises that all their problems could be blamed on someone else, even with the general attitude of solidarity Kenny and others tried to foster. But he'd hoped that they'd be willing to overlook it for a little longer, because he really couldn't deal with this right now.

Okay, he really couldn't deal with it _at all_. He was an activist, not an action hero. Fuck!

Kenny fumbled for his keys, and made his way into the lobby. There wasn't a lot there, just a payphone with a phonebook next to a small table with a couple of chairs, a few potted plants, and a cork noticeboard with some ripped posters on it. It was lit, badly, by one fluorescent ring that gave everything a harsh, unearthly glow. There were also a couple of elevators, and Kenny half-ran over to them and stabbed the 'up' button about three billion times.

"Hey now, no need to be in such a hurry, Long Dong." The two skinheads stalked into the lobby. Another two followed. Had they called for backup? _Shit_. "Hold the elevator for us, willya? Be neighbourly. It's the American way."

Kenny had been around the block enough times to recognise the sinking feeling in his stomach as a warning of imminent danger. _Stall_. "Look, I'm not looking for trouble, I'm just going home, I won't be any bother-" He was cut off as a hand slammed into the wall next to his head, and one of the skinheads loomed over him.

"Going home? We're all about that, but this don't look like an airport to me. If you're lost – hey, my brothers and I will be more than happy to give you a lift." His cronies chuckled nastily. Kenny noticed a tire iron in one of their hands, and with a sinking feeling realised these guys had already decided they were here for a fight.

With a ding, the elevator Kenny was leaning against opened, and he stumbled inside. Frantically, he pressed the 'close door' button, but it was no use. Hands grabbed him and dragged him back out into the lobby. He yelled and kicked, but a fist drove into his stomach and silenced him.

One of the thugs slammed Kenny against the back wall, and he saw stars. He had a view of the lobby through swimming vision, and saw it was filled with no fewer than six of the skinheads. _Cowards_ , he though bitterly. He clenched his fists, and resolved to at least let them know he'd been in a fight before he died.

That was when a massive hand reached through the open door and smashed one of the Nazi's heads sideways.

The seven-foot frame of Scrapyard ducked through into the lobby, paying no attention to the smear of blood he'd left on the door frame. The thug collapsed to the floor behind him and didn't move. The supervillain's hand closed around the back of one of the wooden chairs, and he dragged it with him as he walked towards Kenny without breaking stride.

"Who the fuck are you?" said the thug holding Kenny up. "Fuck him up!" he shouted to his friends.

Kenny might not have noticed if he hadn't been expecting it, but the sound of the chair sliding over the floor had turned to a harsh screech of metal over tile. Scrapyard swung it at the first skinhead to charge in, hard enough that Kenny heard bones break. The chair stayed intact. It wasn't wood any more – in Scrapyard's hand it had changed into solid iron.

The third thug was more cautious, and pulled a knife. He circled Scrapyard, but the cape just rolled his eyes. With a single thrust, all four legs of the chair sank into the drywall, pinning the thug between them. Scrapyard grabbed the top of his head in one enormous paw, braced the wall with his other hand, and slammed the Nazi's head forward into the metal chair. By the time the supervillain reversed the motion to crack his victim's head backwards, the wall had turned to metal for about a foot around where Scrapyard's hand had been.

The one with the tire iron had raised it for a blow, and Kenny opened his mouth to warn Scrapyard but thought better of it. The man swung his weapon with a triumphant yell, a strike that could have cracked brickwork.

The metal flaked into rust where it touched Scrapyard's head, and snapped about two-thirds up the length. Undeterred, the Empire man raised it up for another blow, but the supervillain's hand snaked out and caught it mid-air and jerked it out of his grip.

Within seconds, the entire thing had degraded into sharp-edged rust, and Scrapyard's uppercut lifted the man off his feet. Teeth rattled on the floor, weirdly white in the fluorescent glow. There were only two Empire thugs left, and the one that wasn't holding Kenny took a step back.

The one that was couldn't quite keep the tremor out of his voice. "What are you standing there for? Shoot him!"

Scrapyard took that as a cue to lunge forward, his hand grabbing the sleeve of the other man's leather jacket just as he made to draw what was presumably a gun from his waistband. First the sleeve, then the entire jacket turned to iron, trapping the thug's upper body in place. A touch from Scrapyard trapped the man's legs in his jeans the same way, and then the supervillain was free to wind up for a blow that would snap the man's neck where he stood-

 _CRACK CRACK CRACK._

Scrapyard turned. Little flakes of rust tumbled out of new holes in his jacket. Letting go of the man he'd trapped in his clothes, he spoke for the first time since entering the building.

"Your tools betray you. Your weapons break in your hands rather than support your fascism. The clothes made from the sweat of the workers rebel to paralyse you. The very environment arms itself against you. Your bullets are as _nothing_ to the collective might of the proletariat."

The thug squared up to Scrapyard. "Fuck your undergraduate communist _bullshit_. Face me now, without powers, and I'll show you how a _real_ man fights his battles." He threw aside his useless gun, and his fists balled up and rose in a classic boxer's stance.

The supervillain tilted his head, and considered. "Agreed," he said.

His foot crashed into the Nazis groin before Kenny could process the movement. The man crumpled to the floor, and then the full weight of Scrapyard was on top of him, fists working like a piledriver, until the skinhead's feet had stopped twitching and flecks of bone scattered across the lobby floor.

Kenny threw up, which didn't do much to help the mess.

Scrapyard straightened up, and got off the corpse. "Idiot fascist. I have no idea what he was thinking, trying to take on a cape in close combat… but I suppose if he had been intelligent he wouldn't have been a Nazi."

Kenny muttered something under his breath.

"I'm sorry?" said Scrapyard. He wiped his hands on his jeans.

"Leave..." growled Kenny. "Called the cops… on their way… can't deal with your shit..." His chest hurt where the skinhead had punched him, and his head was pounding form being slammed against the wall, but even so he refused to back down in front of the supervillain before him.

"Then in this neighbourhood, I suspect I shall have to worry in about fifteen minutes or so. In the meantime, how are you doing, Mr Hong? How long has it been? Three years, four?"

"Not long enough. Why are you here?"

Scrapyard began gathering up the bodies of the skinheads, unceremoniously chucking them into the street seemingly without thought as to whether they were dead or alive. "Such ungratefulness… well, I'm not given to blaming the oppressed for their apathy. I spotted your tails as you left the union, and decided to give assistance. Despite your feelings about me, I will still watch out for your safety. That's what comrades do."

"I never asked for it." Kenny hadn't liked being in the cape's debt even when they'd been working together.

"No. I confess myself disappointed, Mr. Hong. You had a lot more fire in you all those years ago. You've become almost _corporate_ ," Scrapyard spat the word, "since you moved here. Regional head. Hmph. Well, I shan't hold it against you. Cheerio." He strolled out of the hotel and down the street, whistling a tune.

Kenny sank against the wall, wondering if he should even bother trying to clean up this mess. No, he decided. He could sweep up all the… bits… from the floor, but there were craters in the tiles and in the wall, not to mention one of the chairs was now made of solid iron.

Fuck. He _was_ kind of grateful, that was the worst thing. He certainly didn't want to die today.

But he wished Scrapyard hadn't found where he lived.


	5. Chapter 5 - Team Building

How do you tell your colleague you know she's a cape?

I mean, on the one hand Rebecca had to know I knew. We'd been working together for almost a week now, and I'd shown her all the tech I'd built so far, including the prototype cape-radar I'd been fiddling with during her interview. If that wasn't a golden opportunity to say, "Um, actually..." then I didn't know what was.

I didn't know _what_ powers she had, however. It wasn't as simple as building a device that would scan capes and output a breakdown of their abilities, because there was such a wide range of powers that I honestly had no idea what to actually scan _for_. I could look at things like lifting power, maximum energy output, theoretical durability, any fluctuations in electromagnetism, all of that, but it wouldn't tell me anything about the powers in question. So until and unless Rebecca decided to open up, I was kind of in the dark.

But yeah, Rebecca was definitely aware I could detect capes. So either she hadn't made the connection that I'd pegged _her_ – unlikely, since she was more switched-on than, well, pretty much anyone I'd ever met – or she was continuing the deception for her own reasons. My approach, so far, was to wait until she told me in her own time and on her own terms. In the meantime, she actually was being an incredibly efficient personal assistant, so it wasn't like I could complain.

I was just impatient to get on with analysing her powers, I guess. Not to mention, if she acknowledged she had them I could exempt her from the power-jamming field using the same kind of power-jammer-canceler that I used on myself and Scrapyard, rather than have her effectively crippled while at work like she was now.

"Sounds to me like you're just scared to confront her, dude."

I glared at Kurt. He was awake, finally, although still too injured to leave his hospital bed. The ward he was in was maybe one of the top five most depressing places in the galaxy. All the funding had been funnelled into the bigger inner-city hospitals, the ones that treated people like the Stansfields or Anderses, or known capes like Freezethaw and Canvas. Those places were clean, bright, and efficient, with all the cutting edge and cape-made technology that money could buy. That left this one with peeling paint, flickering lights, and staff that were overworked and demotivated. Yay, capitalism.

"If you weren't in that bed I'd be hitting you right now," I told him flatly. A passing nurse gave me a look, and I pulled the curtain closed around us.

He laughed, then coughed. "Oh, I'm shaking. Also, hey, that's a quick turnaround from 'Kurt, I'm so sorry, it's my fault for letting you get hurt by doing the sensible thing and getting the hell out of Dodge'. What happened to all that guilt and self-pity?"

This time I actually did hit him, with a spare pillow from the next bed. "I got here, saw your face and remembered 'oh wait, this is just some guy I hang around with sometimes', and decided I didn't care. On the other hand, your mom seems to like you for some reason and I hate to see her cry, so I guess I'll do my best to get you out of here as soon as possible."

Kurt sighed. "Still on that, huh? I've told you we don't need charity-"

"Don't be ridiculous. It's not charity, it's solidarity. Listen, Kurt, all this medical equipment around the room? I can put together better tools in my sleep. Not for medical purposes, not yet. But the more I practice, the better I get, and sooner or later I'll find a way to work round the problem. Replicate some cape's healing power, a localised time-reversal field – I'll have the options, eventually. And on that day, you're outta here, buddy. I'm not letting your folks foot the bill for my mistake."

"Ugh. When you put it like that, I guess I don't have a choice, do I?" Kurt lay back on the pillow, and closed his eyes. "You do what you gotta do, Danny. Tell Rebecca I said hi."

When I got down to the hospital reception, Rebecca was already waiting, looking professional as usual in a black pantsuit. She had a habit of always being ready whenever I saw her, which had confused me for a while. Then, of course, I realised she could probably sense me coming by the way her powers shut off as my power jammer got in range. I certainly wasn't complaining – it certainly cut down on wait time.

As I came into view, she stood up and adjusted her briefcase. "All ready to go? How was Mr. Foster?"

"Getting better. He said to say hi." We walked together out of the hospital and into the rain, Rebecca putting up an umbrella just as we stepped outside. She flagged down a taxi, and we both jumped in.

"Glad to hear that. Now, I've put in the order for that scrap metal, they say to collect it any time after 1200 on Monday. The council finally responded to our notifying them of 'ongoing renovations', so we should be cleared for any major changes to the basement by next Thursday. Moving on to the rewiring, I've booked a contractor..."

Yeah, Rebecca was pretty much the best PA a boss could ask for. She still seemed a little clumsy and forgetful at times, which I was pretty certain was connected in some way to her loss of powers, but had a keen mind and a brilliant imagination for what gadgets might become necessary. Thanks to her, I had designs for about a dozen different things that I could start work on right away, without having to wait for other powers to sample for inspiration. Between Rebecca's help and the funding and proper workspace that the Dockworkers Association was providing, my hypertech was set to improve massively.

Better, she seemed to have a genuine interest in seeing how far I could push myself. She'd never once discouraged any of my ideas, instead responding with enthusiasm and curiosity. I wasn't sure what had made her throw her into this project as much as she had, but I was grateful for it.

As our taxi moved into the docks area, Rebecca gave me a nudge. "Danny, look."

I wasn't sure what she was getting at at first, but then I began to notice. There was an unusual amount of men in business suits, dark coats, and hats. Usually, they were just hanging around – at least two, usually three outside every warehouse, every unloading station, every office that was in use by dockworkers. They weren't doing much of anything, just hanging around and smoking mostly, but it was obvious why they were there.

"The mafia," I growled. "I thought we were done with this shit."

"You knew there'd be some kind of backlash when you drove off Galvanate," Rebecca reminded me. "I'm just surprised it's taken this long for them to act… so this is what actual Mafiosi look like, huh? I've honestly never seen proper old-school gangsters like this before."

My fist clenched. "Yeah, that's them. Don't be fooled by the cheap suits, they're just another gang of thugs. Difference is they have the police, the politicians and the big businesses in their pockets, so they can do whatever they feel like and everyone else has no choice but to take it or get arrested."

"They have to at least _pretend_ to follow the law," Rebecca pointed out, looking dubious. "You make it sound like they can just execute someone in broad daylight and there'd be no repercussions. The police would have to respond for something really heinous, and the truth would come out eventually. The system _does_ work, Danny."

"Oh, it works. It works for them. They can and have killed people in, as you say, broad daylight. Investigations get dropped due to 'lack of evidence'. Key witnesses suddenly forget what they saw. The police get to say they tried their best, the real culprits get off scot-free, and justice is nowhere to be seen." With an effort, I relaxed my fist and sat back in the taxi seat, then turned to look at Rebecca. "You're a smart kid, and your optimism is one of the reasons why I like working with you, but I think you'll get more cynical the longer you work in a place like this. Just the way it goes, I guess."

She folded her arms across her chest. "Hmph. We'll just have to agree to disagree on that. You know I'm not a fan of Scrapyard, or his militant extremist stance. I refuse to believe that people can't get anything done through official channels, even accounting for a little inevitable corruption. It's just people working together like you're always on about, just on a larger scale."

I opened my mouth to explain how a worker's co-operative was entirely different to a hierarchical state government, but just then the taxi pulled into the parking lot of the Dockworker's Association. I decided to drop the subject.

"Well, you're probably right that we shouldn't just fight the mafia on principle like Scrapyard would want," I admitted, stepping out onto the packed earth and avoiding a puddle. "I don't like it, but I'm inclined to let them be as well, so long as they don't hurt our guys or interfere with our work too much. Put the word round, would you? Make sure all the foremen and managers know to watch out for anyone who looks like they might get rowdy."

Rebecca followed on, umbrella and briefcase at the ready. "Will do, Danny."

* * *

I stopped working with a sigh when I saw Rebecca poke her head round my door and tap her watch meaningfully.

It was five o' clock, and the day had been a pretty productive one. Without a way to experiment on a cape, I was limited to refining what tech I had at the moment. I was fine with this – my power-jammer was the most important thing I had at the moment, big-picture-wise. There were two main areas of improvement that I'd been working on.

The first was integrating the power-nullifying field with the power-jamming field better – that is, to increase the range at which it negated already manifested powers to match the range at which it cut them off at the source. This was fiddly, to say the least – but, with better-quality equipment and more precise engineering, I was improving. I had a feeling I would require some more exotic materials to _really_ get it off the ground, but wasn't too worried. Either Rebecca would come through for me yet again and locate what I needed, or I'd just have to manufacture my own.

The second main effort was in making it smaller and less intrusive, while keeping the range of effect the same. I had kept the limpet design, but it was now as big around as a fist, rather than a saucer. With luck, I'd get it coin-sized or smaller, and could hide it behind picture frames or slide it between floorboards. Hell, if I managed to get it that small I could attach it to a bracelet and wear it like a wristwatch, or put it on the inside of my belt. Or both, why not? I mean, making it wearable wasn't a _huge_ priority since it already fit in a pocket, but it'd be nice to have.

On Rebecca's suggestion I'd added a couple of other features as well. For instance, it now had a detachable jack that could attach the thing to mains power, and I'd modified the battery to recharge if plugged in. I'd be working on battery life later, but I was waiting until I'd clarified my ideas for generating power first. If I could get a miniature generator inside each power-jammer, that would be ideal.

That was a job for another time, though.

Personally, I wanted to just stay in the office and keep working overnight, or over the weekend for as long as it took – I hadn't even _started_ working with the data I had from my experiments with Scrapyard, and I had a couple of ideas for how to replicate the ability that I really wanted to try out. Unfortunately, I had a very determined personal assistant who had definite ideas about 'sleep patterns' and 'nutrition'. After the second night in a row where I'd stayed behind 'just five more minutes' and Rebecca had found me slumped over the desk when she came in for the morning, she'd begun practically dragging me outside as soon as the clock hit five. I didn't see what the big deal was. My work was important, right? Shouldn't I be getting as much of it done as possible?

Still, I wasn't going to argue with Rebecca about it, not when her mouth was set in that stubborn line that meant 'don't even try it'.

The rain had stopped over the course of the day, thankfully, although there were still a few puddles here and there around the parking lot. There was a steady stream of office workers trudging their way home, although some of the dockworkers wouldn't be done until late that night. This time of year, it was already getting dark, and I was thankful for my coat, cheap and thin as it was.

"Well, I'll see you on Monday, Danny, I guess," said Rebecca, turning to leave. Always the professional. An idea struck me.

"Uh, hey, Rebecca?"

She stopped and looked over her shoulder. "Hm?"

"Look, it's Friday. Want to come get a drink before we leave for the weekend? There's a pretty cosy bar that's good to us dockworkers, not too far from here." I stopped, and realised what I'd just said. I tried to control a blush. "Oh- not like _that_. I just meant, you know, if you're working for the union it'd be a good idea to mingle a bit, get your face known. You've not really interacted with anyone except me."

"I'm only really around because of you, and to help you with your cape stuff..." Rebecca said, then smiled. "But I see your point. I guess I could come for one or two. Having said that, Danny, you do remember that I'm only nineteen, right?"

I slapped my forehead. "Oh, wow. I'd actually forgotten. You don't act like it at all."

"I'll take that as a compliment. So, under the understanding that I won't be drinking, and that this is in no way, shape or form apart from the literal me 'going out with' you… sure, show me a good time, Danny Hebert." Still smiling, she offered me her arm. I took it in an exaggeratedly formal motion, and off we went.

* * *

I'd known George Ferris, the owner and general manager of _Neptune's Beer_ , for a few years – in fact, we'd worked very briefly on the same team, while he was finishing up the purchase of this place. As an ex-dockworker, he knew how we could be, and didn't mind a certain level of rowdiness from his regulars. So I'd expected Neptune's to be loud and cheerful, it being close of play on Friday and all.

Instead there was a sullen atmosphere. Neptune's usually kept its lights low, and the air was usually pretty smoky anyway, but now it seemed oppressive rather than intimate and cosy. People were keeping their heads down, and talking in low voices over their pints. A few voices called out greetings as Rebecca and I ducked inside, but nothing like the raucous cheer I'd usually expect.

The reason why was pretty obvious. Sitting on the biggest table in the place, in the middle of the bar floor, were five men in suits, apparently paying no mind to anyone around them. Out of everyone in the bar, they were the only ones laughing. Fully half the dockworkers in there had their eyes fixed on the table that had been taken over by the mafia.

"Oh, fuck me," I muttered as we got to the bar. "This is going to end in tears."

"That's not all," Rebecca pointed out. "Check out the guy with them."

I looked again, surreptitiously. Sitting on the same table as the mafia guys, but not obviously a part of the group, was a man smoking a cigar, dressed almost entirely in red – red chinos, red t-shirt, red trilby. A quick look revealed he even had red moccasins on his feet. They looked pretty snazzy, and entirely out of place in a joint like Neptune's.

"Those _are_ some impressive shoes," I admitted. "What about him?"

"Oh, come on," whispered Rebecca. "Brightly coloured clothing plus organised crime equals?"

"A cape," I sighed. "Jesus. You're sure he's with them?"

"I think," said Rebecca, "that we should make this a _quick_ drink, just in case. We don't need to get caught up in this."

"Yeah, agreed." We both bought our drinks – simple beer for me, lime and soda for Rebecca – and retreated to a far corner of the bar, where we were well out of the danger zone but could keep an eye on the mafia in the opposite corner.

As the evening wore on, it became clear it wasn't going how I'd hoped. The folks I'd been hoping to introduce to my personal assistant had all left early, for obvious reasons, leaving behind a crowd I didn't know so well. The heavy drinkers, the ones with hard home lives, the guys usually spoiling for a fight. There were a few people coming in off the night shifts, but they didn't look interested in staying long, or in socialising either. Like us, they could see how the wind was blowing tonight.

The mafia goons, on the other hand, didn't seem to have any idea of how to read the mood. Drunken singing, raucous laughter every other sentence, calling out to the barman to bring over more drinks – honestly, their appalling behaviour should have earned them a jail sentence even if all the, you know, extortion and menacing and probably murder hadn't already.

And then it happened. It was only a matter of time, really.

"Shit," I said, as the echoes of the glass breaking echoed round the suddenly silent bar. Even the mafia had frozen. It was like some artistic tableau, all eyes suddenly fixed on one corner of the room. The glass on the lino floor of Neptune's. The spreading puddle of beer. The boots of the burly dockworker who'd previously owned the beer. The mafia thug paused in the middle of the wild gesture that had collided with the dockworker.

He was about to apologise. You could see it in his eyes. Even this late, it might have been enough.

But then the dockworker grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and everything went out of control.

"That was my drink, fuckface!" roared the man, spittle flying from his mouth. "I've had it up to here with you assholes. Bad enough you been hanging around like a bad fuckin' smell all day, bad enough you come in our bar like you own the place, now you gotta make me waste a beer as well? Like money isn't tight enough?" He shoved the mafia goon backwards over the table, and bent down until their foreheads were nearly touching. "How are you gonna make it right, huh?"

 _Click_. "How about this," drawled another of the mafia men, handgun pressed to the dockworker's temple, "We make it right by not blowing what little brains you got out and getting this," he sneered, " _fine_ establishment all dirty. Seems pretty generous to me, what with how you gone manhandled our boy without no provocation. Now, you go sit down nice and quiet-like, and we'll say no more about this. Sound good, punk?"

The man whose pint had been spilled straightened up, and glared at the man with the drawn gun. After a tense moment, he spat on the floor by the group's feet and turned away. For a golden moment I thought that was it.

"Yeah," said the idiot who'd started all this in the first place, getting up and straightening his shirt, face flushed. "You _better_ fucking run. Fucking idiots, never stop to think we can decide whether you have a job tomorrow. Hey, I wonder how hard it'd be to find this asshole's home address?"

About twenty chairs scraped back as all the largest, drunkest dockworkers lurched to their feet, all four remaining Mafiosi drew guns from hidden holsters, and I buried my face in my hands. After a second, I wrenched them away and forced myself to watch what was going on. This was, on some level, my fault, after all.

I kept my eyes on the man in red, that Rebecca had identified as a cape. He was watching the standoff, but hadn't made a move yet. I almost missed him lighting his cigar and taking a drag – he hadn't used any matches or lighter that I could see. I shook my head. Now wasn't the time to be curious about that.

For a tense moment, no-one did anything. None of the dockworkers wanted to be the first to get shot, but there were a lot more of them than there were of the Mafiosi, and they would surely overwhelm the goons if they tried. On the other hand, the thugs couldn't back down now, not unless they wanted to piss away every bit of intimidation they held.

 _BOOM_.

The door slammed open, and the light from outside was quickly blocked out by the massive figure ducking through the opening.

"Oh, great," Rebecca hissed from beside me. "Just what we needed."

Scrapyard walked forward casually, as if he owned the place. His head turned side to side, taking in the scene – the five Mafiosi with guns drawn, trying to cover everyone in the bar at once, half the people out of their chairs with fists clenched, the broken glass on the floor. I couldn't see his mouth beneath his 'anarchy' scarf, but I'd worked with him often enough by now that I could imagine the predatory grin.

"You have ten seconds to leave," he told the group of armed men flatly. "Otherwise, I am going to start hurting you."

A pistol swung round, and everyone in the bar jumped at the _crack_ when it went off. Scrapyard brushed the little spot of rust off his breast and counted under his breath. The man who'd fired stared, eyes wide.

"That's ten, then. I did warn you. Everyone else, I appreciate your willingness to stand up for yourself, but please stay back. This is likely to get-" he lunged forward, shockingly quick for his size, and crushed the closest man's gun hand in a meaty paw, "messy."

The gun was already flaking to rust under Scrapyard's power, but he ripped it out of his victim's grip anyway. He flung the half-degraded mess hard into the next man's face, and I winced to hear cartilage shatter. The man in Scrapyard's grip flailed at the supervillain holding his broken hand, but it achieved nothing. With a lightning-quick motion, Scrapyard grabbed his neck, raised him up slightly, then slammed the hapless shooter down. Straight onto the broken glass.

I almost missed the man in red slide subtly down the table away from the group with pistols. The three remaining Mafiosi fired a couple more shots, making the windows rattle and my ears ring. They didn't do anything to Scrapyard. In response, the supervillain grabbed an unfinished drink off the table, and flung the liquid inside into their eyes. The backswing caught the least lucky of the thugs square on the skull, and glass shattered for the second time that night.

One of them – the one who'd drawn his gun first, and seemed the most canny – backed off, and turned to run. Scrapyard gave a dark chuckle. "No. You had your chance to retreat."

With his free hand, he swept a bottle off another table, and in one smooth movement threw it at the back of the thug's head. It was solid metal by the time it left his hand, and the impact cracked bone and drew blood.

The last man, Scrapyard's last target, scrambled backwards on the floor. He clutched his gun like a lifeline, and fired all the bullets he had left into the supervillain's chest. When Scrapyard continued on, implacable, he kept pulling the trigger, face a mask of horror. His eyes flicked once to the man in red, but he was still sitting down, showing no signs of intervening.

I had a feeling I knew what was about to happen, but didn't want to believe it. When Scrapyard had smashed the glass on the third man's head, he'd been left holding the jagged bottom. Now, it had turned to metal, but had lost none of its sharpness. It shifted in his grip, so that he was holding it in the palm of his hand. Slowly, the supervillain reached out to grip his victim by the hair, turning his face towards him. His other hand drew back-

"Stop!" A voice shouted. Heads turned in our direction, and I realised it was me. Somehow I'd risen out of my seat. I took a breath. "You've made your point, Scrapyard. I don't think any of these men will be coming back. Don't make me regret allowing you your powers." I held my colleague's gaze for long moments. The last victim moaned. The gathered Dockworkers held their breath.

At last Scrapyard shrugged. "Have it your way." His knee flashed out and crunched into the man's nose. I winced, but at least he'd avoided a glassing. Scrapyard addressed the crowd. "See what happens when they invade your spaces! I have no doubt, none at all, that you could have achieved such a result even had I not, ah, happened to drop in for some sober and restrained drinking." There were chuckles, the supervillain's own bass rising above them all. "But since these gentlemen seem to have spoiled the mood..." He reached down and riffled through the unconscious man's pockets until he came across a fat wallet. "Drinks are courtesy of management!" There was a cheer, and people rushed forward to pat Scrapyard on the back.

I relaxed, hands trembling. It was one thing knowing about Scrapyard's powers from testing them in a lab. It was quite another seeing him in violent action. I'd known he was stronger than even his massive frame might suggest, true superstrength even if it wasn't on the level of someone like Freezethaw. I hadn't realised what that meant he could do to a human body, cracking bones like eggshells. I'd known he could degrade metal with a touch, flaking it into sharp-edged rust within seconds. I'd had _no_ idea he could pull the same trick on bullets fired at him, softening them up enough for his enhanced durability to take care of the rest of the impact, letting him stride through gunfire like some juggernaut of ultraviolence. And while I'd seen him turn non-metal objects into metal before, the gleam of light on the jagged edges of what had been a glass as he raised it for a killing blow would stick with me.

Rebecca squeezed my shoulder. "Well done. Come on, let's go..."

We went. In front of us, the man in red had got up to leave as well. Before he left, he paused to ash his cigar on the floor in a couple of places. When he got to the door, he paused and gave us a wink, then left.

I had a sinking feeling that I couldn't place. Somehow I knew that this night, while it might have seemed like a victory, was going to be trouble.

"Rebecca."

"Hm?"

"I just wanted to thank you for all your help so far. I think I'm going to need a lot more of it over the next week or so. And… any extra resources you can think of using, I just want to let you know I'm okay with it."

She looked at me hard. For a second I thought she might be about to say something, but then she shook her head. "I appreciate the thought. I'll see what I can do. Goodbye, Danny." And with that, she walked off into the Brockton Bay evening.

* * *

I was woken by the phone early the next morning. I scrambled out of bed and put on my glasses, then scrambled over to the wallset.

"This is Danny Hebert."

" _Danny, it's Rebecca. I thought you should know. Neptune's Beer had a fire last night. It's not completely burnt down but… it's bad, Danny._ "


	6. Chapter 6 - Canvass

I hurried over to the ruins of _Neptune's Beer_ just as soon as I'd inhaled a bacon sandwich and, more importantly, gulped down some coffee. Given that it was right by the docks, it felt weird to be effectively going to work on a Saturday morning… but who was I kidding? If I'd stayed home from the lab and read the paper or something I'd just feel antsy. Besides, I wanted to see what I could do to help out George Ferris. Maybe the Association could organise a whip-round or something to raise funds for the repairs to his bar.

And, well. This fire had the smell of foul play about it. There wasn't any evidence to support that, I wasn't getting some kind of cape-sense to detect crimes, but come on. A Dockworker bar gets set on fire right as tensions with the mafia rise? Not hard to work out. Which meant it was my fault, again.

When I arrived at the site, there was a single fire engine parked outside, with firefighters standing around. Nothing was actually on fire, but they probably needed to conduct a proper search of the building and check out how likely it was to collapse or reignite, or something like that. Like Rebecca had said, the bar hadn't burnt _down_ , exactly. There was a large hole in the roof where it had been weakened and fallen in, and the walls were blackened with soot, but the actual structure was still upright. It probably wasn't safe to go in, though, even now the fire looked to be out, and all the stuff inside was probably torched. Poor George.

More worryingly, there was also a squad car with a pair of cops. I didn't see if they were the ones that had sat and done nothing while Fred Morgan was being murdered, but I guess it didn't matter. I spotted George straight away, in conversation with one of the cops. He waved me over.

"Danny! Hey, it's good of you to come, man."

"No problem. Listen, you need support, a little something to tide you over, or even just a friendly face to vent at – anything at all, you just stop on by and ask, okay? You've been good to us, George, and we're gonna look after you too."

"I appreciate that, Danny, I really do." He scowled, and indicated the cop behind him. "Maybe you can start by talking some sense into this guy. Says I must have been negligent with fire safety, or that I don't know how to use a damn fire extinguisher!"

The cop made a soothing gesture. "That's not it at all," he said, in a vaguely patronising tone. "You said yourself you came down at about two o'clock to find a significant fire in the bar area-"

"Which I put out!" George insisted.

"I'm not doubting you, Mr Ferris," continued the cop smoothly. "However, fire extinguishers are harder to use than people think, and even a fire that looks like it's extinguished might reignite, especially if it's had time to raise the temperature of the room."

George bristled. "Listen here, you patronising-"

"Easy," I murmured. It wouldn't do to antagonise the police, even if this one was being an unhelpful asshole.

George subsided, and glared at the cop. "Yeah. I know about fire extinguishers, okay? Those guys," he indicated the firefighters, "make you do safety courses and things in order to run your own joint, so I know all that. And even so, I'll still swear on a stack of Bibles that I put out that damn fire! Look, the fire wasn't that big when I found it – sure it was scary, but more like a campfire than a massive blaze. I caught it fast, and I hung around for a while after in case it started up again. I'm telling you, there's something weird going on."

The cop scratched his head. "Well, in that case, Mr Ferris, I don't know what to tell you. You say you caught it, and yet here we are. Unless you're suggesting that another fire was started separately?"

"Christ, I don't know, do I?" George threw up his hands. "Danny, you talk to him. I'm off to see if they've managed to fish anything out of the wreckage yet." With that, he stomped off.

I ended up having to give my name and occupation to the cops. Well, I could have refused, but there was no reason to set them against us. If the fire _did_ turn out to be arson like I suspected, they were our best shot at finding out that fact. Not that I told them of my suspicions, of course. You don't just go around saying that the mafia did something, especially not to cops.

Well, actually you were better off not talking to cops in general. I'd managed to avoid getting in trouble in my younger years, but a lot of guys I knew had records from little things like punch-ups or taking home things from work. When the cops knew about them they just labelled them as 'a criminal' inside their little piggy heads, and then they were just looking for an excuse to put them away. Nah, better to look after our own and not get the 'justice' system involved if we could help it.

There wasn't much we could do about an arson, though. Having said that, I had an idea for some kind of powder or aerosol that would glow bright green wherever parahuman abilities had been used within the last twenty-four hours. It would need quite a lot more copper than I had on hand, and I'd need to obtain a lot more sulphuric acid for the base, and-

I tore myself away from that train of thought. It wasn't useful. Just- just let the police do their damn jobs, Danny. They've got to be good for something, else why're we paying for them?

Hehe.

No, right now there was no way to tell what was up with _Neptune's Beer_. It was a shame though. The place had been a social hub for the dockworkers for a while. Taking their drinks away would be a blow to morale. I just hoped we'd find a new bar, rather than go home to drink – the last thing some of the guys needed was to start drinking where their friends couldn't keep an eye on them.

In any case. I was here now. May as well go to work, right? Part of being a super-science cape was always having something to work on, always having a way to channel the unlimited creative energy that seemed to have filled my brain. I certainly wasn't where I wanted to be with the power-jammer yet. Almost on automatic, I found myself heading to the Dockworkers Association, and by extension my lab.

Eh. I'd call Rebecca when I got there and tell her what I was doing. If I got lost in thought again, she'd pull me out in time to go to bed at a reasonable hour. With that in mind, I wandered over to the Association building, my mind fizzing and sparking with its fantastic devices.

* * *

It was, um, later. I'd forgotten my watch this morning, and hadn't been keeping track of time. By the look of the light outside, it was edging towards sunset, so four o'clock maybe? It was just so easy to get lost in what I was doing. Designing and making my devices just felt _right,_ you know? Like I was supposed to be there. Today was a bit less focused than usual, which I put down to worry about George's bar.

I did end up making a prototype for the power-detecting chemical. It had been bugging me all morning, like an itch that wouldn't go away. At the moment I'd only managed to precipitate it to a powder, but the concept was sound. The powder remained colourless as I puffed it around the room, but lit up as bright a green as one of those disco glow sticks when it settled on a pile of rust that had once been sheet metal before Scrapyard had got to work on it. It was still a bit unrefined – not to mention potentially poisonous, so not much use in real life. Ideally I'd be able to turn it into an aerosol and have it safe to breathe, but this was fine for now; once I'd made the thing my brain stopped throwing up ideas for it, at least, and I was left in peace to continue yesterday's work.

Okay, actually I didn't get that far with expanding the range on my power-jammer either. I just wasn't feeling it today. Instead I took a look at one of my more recent projects – trying to replicate either of Scrapyard's powers. There was a certain wavelength I was playing with – I'd recorded it during my experiments with Scrapyard but hadn't managed to replicate it just yet. I had a sort of idea that it was actually two opposite wavelengths that didn't quite cancel each other out, with the one that was actually materialised determining whether it was metal that degraded or non-metals that were transmuted.

A wavelength of _what_ I didn't know – reality, possibly. It seemed like the same thing that I touched on with my power-jammer, so I was working off the assumption that it was. I hadn't made much progress so far – replicating powers was a bit harder than just affecting them directly. I wasn't even trying to weaponise it at this point. What I had was basically two upright coils of metal, between which was, theoretically, a beam of Scrapyard's power. At the moment, I thought it was trying to degrade anything it was pointing at, without checking if it was metal or not. This would be fine, except it didn't actually degrade metal either – for that, it seemed to be trying to convert it _into_ metal. It was a problem with the detection or distinction process, and I'd need more work with Scrapyard to sort it out.

Well, anyway. It was about as productive a day as I could wish for. Hero didn't become a technological god overnight. At least, I didn't think he had.

There was a knock on the door of my basement laboratory. Without waiting for a reply, Rebecca opened it and peered inside. She looked about as worried as she ever did.

"Danny, you'd better pack yourself away. It's George Ferris."

"I already talked to him this morning, remember? There's not much I can do for him right now-"

"No," Rebecca interrupted me, which was actually kind of rare. "His place went up again. He's- Danny, he's been taken in by the police. They're saying he torched the place himself for the insurance money."

I gaped. "Thats…. That's just ridiculous. That bar was his life!" Honestly, I was surprised George even had insurance. A lot of folks I knew didn't – when they were lucky enough to own property.

Rebecca raised an eyebrow. "Money makes people do strange things, Danny," she said. "I might be young, but even I know that. I can't find any dependents, or anything tying him here. Maybe he just decided he wanted to get out and start again."

"No," I said firmly. "George simply wouldn't do that. He's as invested in the community as anyone."

"Well, if you say so," Rebecca agreed, without the tone of scepticism that people saying that line almost always managed to put in. "Anyway, he doesn't have a lawyer, of course, so he called us – as in, the Dockworker's Association – to help him out. He's on the line right now."

I ran a hand through my hair, and started up the stairs. "Jesus. Alright, I'll go and speak to him, talk about options. Do we have, I don't know, some kind of legal advisor we can call? I'm no lawyer."

"We do have a small firm we usually go to. They mostly handle industrial arbitration, for obvious reasons, but I've prepared the necessary paperwork nevertheless. They might know someone who can help even if they can't... look, are you sure you wouldn't rather I talk to Mr Ferris instead? I actually _do_ have an idea of what needs to happen."

"No, it's fine. You might know all the legal procedures, but I know George. What he needs right now is a friendly ear more than anything. Leave the legal advisor's details with me, I'll walk George through getting in touch with them. No, there's something I need you to do for me, if that's alright."

"Of course," Rebecca said, sounding surprised. "That's what I'm here for, isn't it?"

I rubbed the back of my head. "Yeah… but this requires you to trespass on a crime scene. If you're not comfortable with it, just say so."

She looked down and chewed her lip for a moment in thought. But only a brief moment. She gave a small nod and met my eyes.

"I have no problem with it. What exactly do you want me to do?"

* * *

There were still a few police around the ruins of _Neptune's Beer,_ but they looked tired and bored, which suited Rebecca just fine _._ The place looked much, much worse than it had only that morning. Only one of the walls was left standing, and it was hardly recognisable. The rest was just a sad little blackened pile of rubble on the ground. The blaze had spread to the buildings on either side before being put out this time, and there was visible scorching on buildings on the other side of the street.

Yeesh. Rebecca would not have wanted to be caught in that. Sure, she was invulnerable, and had weathered Lightlance's searing laser beams without a scratch. But a big fire like that sucked all the oxygen out of the air, and Rebecca _did_ still need to breathe. Well, okay, if she'd actually been caught in it she'd simply have flown away, through the ceiling if necessary. But still.

It felt comforting to think of herself as, if not quite Alexandria, then at least a cape again. For about a week now she'd been just plain old Rebecca Costa-Brown almost the entire day. Sure, she was free to be herself outside working hours… but a new cape zipping around Brockton Bay and beating up criminals would attract attention she didn't need, and might prompt some to start making comparisons. So she'd mostly been making use of her mental powers to get through the trivial bits of paperwork that came with being a personal assistant. And to think of her next move.

Danny seemed to rely on her, that much was obvious after only a week. It was almost adorable how wrapped up in his work he got – common among the tinkering type of cape, and worse the stronger one's power got. It wouldn't do to have him unhealthy, though, so she'd been forced to look after him. As a point of professional pride, she thought she'd done a good job.

The question was: did Danny _trust_ her? It might seem an odd question, given that he'd let her into his life, allowed her to manage his job, and held no secrets from her. But if she came up to him tomorrow and told him everything about Cauldron and her own role, would he be happy to let her show him how to start saving the world? (And not just that part of it that worked in blue-collar jobs.) Probably not – he'd feel betrayed, most likely, and then Cauldron would have a much harder time getting hold of him. And that wasn't acceptable, not at all. Cauldron _needed_ what Danny Hebert had to offer.

So, until he felt like he could trust her enough to at least hear her out when she finally came clean, she just had to work with him and show him that she was trust _worthy_. By, uh, lying to him by omission, admittedly. Rebecca wasn't entirely comfortable with that, but there wasn't really another option. Still, sometime soon, she'd have to tell Danny about her powers. Rebecca didn't _think_ he actually knew what they were, but she knew that he knew she was a cape, even if he didn't know that she knew he knew.

(In books, Rebecca had always hated the kind of character who would complain about not being able to keep up with chains of inferences like this. Now that she was a superhero with a brain the size of a planet, metaphorically speaking, she never had to be one.)

In an ideal world, she would have told Danny about her powers immediately, but it just hadn't come up in the interview and she'd been understandably flustered at that point. She could have told him later but, well, at that point it was just a bit awkward.

Also, at that point she'd met Scrapyard.

The vigilante was everything Cauldron _didn't_ need. A cape of limited utility against the Warrior, and even more limited vision, focusing everything he was into his anarchist worldview and refusing to consider a bigger picture. Worse, he was incredibly charismatic, and Rebecca was worried that Danny would just become suborned into becoming Scrapyard's personal trump card. She'd been quietly furious that Danny had outfitted a supervillain with not only an immunity to his power-nullification, but had actually given him a power-nullifier of his own to walk around with! With those two tools, a man like Scrapyard could become an absolute nightmare for Cauldron to deal with, not to mention almost impossible for the police and heroic capes to stop.

So she'd tried her best to try and influence Danny away from the more radical points of Scrapyard's thinking, interjecting with a more moderate approach whenever she thought it'd have results. She'd tell Danny about her powers when she was sure that Scrapyard wouldn't try to make Danny use _her_ in his class war.

Which is why she was preparing to sneak onto a crime scene and scatter toxic chemicals onto it. Life was complicated sometimes.

Danny had asked to go to the site of _Neptune's Beer_ and investigate whether it was the doing of a cape or not. She'd asked how, and he'd just produced a small doggy-bag of whitish powder. _That_ had raised some eyebrows, until he'd caught on and explained what he'd been working on all day. Someday she was going to stop being surprised by Danny's incredible potential, but not today, apparently.

Rebecca had swapped her usual business suit for a pair of jeans and a hoodie that pulled right the way down over her eyes, both in black. She liked black. She knew it wasn't actually the best thing for sneaking around in – dark blue or green, especially mottled, was better, which was why the military used it – but somehow she didn't think that was going to be a problem.

People never thought about looking _up_. Also, to be fair, she was about a mile above the cops, so she couldn't blame them for not noticing.

Ideally she'd be doing this in the dead of night, which just felt like the right time to commit what was technically her first crime, but instead it was almost sunset. The shadows were getting long, and there was a distinct chill to the air.

Since she was flying, Rebecca didn't have to worry about sneaking past police cordons or anything like that. Instead, she elected to just drop straight out of the sky while no-one was looking and hide in the shadow of the adjacent building. There, she hovered about a foot in the air and scattered the powder Danny had given her onto the ashes.

The fact that it glowed bright green, like an artist's depiction of radioactive material, made her feel slightly silly about how much thought she'd put into her stealth. Especially when she realised she was going to have to disturb the ash anyway to bury the glow. Still. At least she wasn't leaving footprints, and that was something.

That was that, then, proof positive. The green glow meant a parahuman power had been used – putting things together and using a bit of intuition, it was probably the cape in red that had been in _Neptune's Beer_ the last night it was open. And _that_ meant there was a supervillain in Brockton Bay that she didn't know about, working for organised crime.

When she found out she'd be coming to Brockton, Rebecca had immediately had a look at Cauldron's files on the capes she might encounter. This was partly to work out if any of them might be responsible for Contessa's blind spot, and partly because if she was going to be working there she'd damn well better have a clue what was going on. It wouldn't do to get on the wrong side of, to take an example, Allfather and be revealed as a cape on someone else's terms. She hadn't heard of any pyrokinetic supervillains active in the area. There _was_ Freezethaw, but he was a hero last she heard, and he only rarely started actual fires when he raised the temperature.

If it was the mafia… they could well be importing capes from their branches in other cities. Which would be a problem, especially with how much interest they were taking in the docks lately. Fortunately, the dockworkers had Danny as their trump card against enemy capes. Unfortunately, if the mafia couldn't just use their capes they'd be likely to resort to their tried-and-tested methods of extortion, blackmail and murder.

In any case, Danny needed to know about the confirmation of parahuman arson. Rebecca took a quick peek out to the police cordon to check that they were still looking in the wrong direction to see her take off. They were, but there was another figure leaning against a wall some way off, smoking a cigar.

He was wearing a long black coat that covered up most of the red, but Rebecca had a _very_ good memory for faces. The thin features, angular cheekbones, light brown stubble – it was the cape from the bar last night. What on earth was he doing back at the crime scene? Even if the cops were completely in the mafia's pocket (and Rebecca didn't believe Danny when he said that most were, or Scrapyard when he said that the setup of the justice system made it the same thing in the end), there were still superheroes that could put two and two together. It was just a _dumb_ thing to do.

Maybe Rebecca could ask him why when she caught him.

When the unknown cape looked down to re-light his cigar – once again using only flames generated from his fingers, although she might not have caught it if she wasn't looking for it – Rebecca launched herself skywards again, and almost immediately came down on a nearby rooftop. This was a little riskier, but she moved fast enough to be little more than a black blur. As long as she waited a while before moving again, people generally dismissed a brief glimpse as nothing more than a trick of the light.

Also, her hood had gotten tangled up behind her head. Stupid thing. She'd gotten used to her helmet while flying and had forgotten about aerodynamics. It had been hard enough getting used to her – or rather, Alexandria's – cape.

When the cape in red finally tossed his cigar butt onto the ground and moved off, Rebecca followed, flitting between rooftops like some kind of bat-themed superhero. Rather than taking him in immediately, she'd decided to wait and see what he was doing back at the Docks – and more importantly, whether he would meet up with any more new capes.

The arsonist – _suspected_ arsonist, rather – got more than a few unfriendly looks while walking around the docks from those dockworkers still around for some reason or another. He kept going with a tiny little smug smile on his face. Rebecca was only just getting used to reading people's faces, but she interpreted it as: _I'm in no danger and don't care what you think_. Arrogant, or actually that powerful?

He stopped off to talk to a lot of the Mafiosi who'd been hanging around the docks lately. They were talking low enough that she couldn't hear them from way up on the roof – and the wind was a bit stronger up here besides – but reading lips wasn't hard for her. The cape seemed to be checking up on the unpowered minions, checking they were OK and generally raising morale. They universally regarded him with a mixture of respect and wariness, and they all called him 'Sir'. Rebecca kind of got a military vibe from the way he was acting – it was like an officer mixing with the lower ranks more than anything.

There was an interesting detail that Rebecca noticed. Whenever the cape was talking to the Mafiosi standing guard over something, he would catch any ash that fell from his cigar and put it in his pocket. On the other hand, when he was wandering around, he would sometimes pause to ash out his cigar on the ground, usually next to or just inside buildings. Once he stuck his arm inside a window and knocked the cigar against the frame.

It was disgusting, and probably a fire hazard, but not technically illegal.

Eventually, the cape made his way onto a ship, docked in an out-of-the-way jetty, far away from the main complex of the docks. There were a few scattered warehouses here, and some boat sheds, things like that, but most of the lights were off – even now, when the sun had actually set. There had been dockworkers going about their business everywhere, but here the only people around worked for the mafia. The cape sauntered in like he owned the place, and boarded the ship. Rebecca could see the name on a board at the prow, or bow, or whatever the hell it was you called the front of a ship: the _Santa Ferrero_.

When he was on, he made his way straight to the bridge – he'd clearly been aboard before. Rebecca touched down on top of the superstructure, and strained to listen.

"...all done, Mr. Mancini. Within 24 hours, most of the docks will be a smouldering ruin. My power worked fine on this fuckin' scumhole bar – Galvanate musta been full of shit like you said. Power-blocking, the fuck is that?" The cape had a rough accent, American but otherwise unidentifiable. Also, like, a _really_ foul mouth. Swearwords came to his lips as naturally as breathing. Rebecca was really leaning towards 'military'.

"I appreciate it, Fuse. Would you like to stay and help oversee the unloading operation? It'll be the last one for a while, until we can buy up the land and rebuild." This 'Mr. Mancini' sounded a lot more cultured – with a New York accent.

Interesting. She'd come across the Mancinis, but dismissed them as just a relatively rich Italian-American family, involved in trade and shipping companies across the Caribbean and up the East coast, which explained why they had a home in Brockton. Apparently they were involved in more than that.

Including, um, burning down docks. Rebecca was half-temped to burst in and shake down this 'Fuse' for answers and get him to disable whatever bombs he'd placed… but for all she knew he had a deadman switch or something. It wouldn't do to go off half-cocked and get people killed.

She'd just lifted herself off the bridge and was about to fly back and report to Danny when the gun went off. Her head snapped round to locate the source – on the jetty, by the sounds of it.

"What was that?" said Fuse, from below her.

There was more gunfire, a scream, and a splash.

"Go and check it out," ordered Mancini. "I hope it's just the men doing something that'll get them terminated. It _could_ be that asshole Scrapyard. Be careful."

The door opened, and Rebecca shot up about twenty feet into the night and listened. Fuse stepped out and put on his hat, conjuring a fireball in his hand as he looked back and grinned. "Shit, boss. This is what you pay me for, right? They'll have to use dental records to identify that commie fuck when I'm through with him. _You_ just sit right there and enjoy the fireworks." He strolled down the gangplank, whistling.

Damn. What to do? If anything was going to set off whatever it was that Fuse had planned, it was Scrapyard. Hell, he'd probably say it was an acceptable loss to take down an enemy cape even if the entire docks burned down, the psycho. So Rebecca needed to deal with Fuse first, and get the information on what it was he'd done. Then she needed to find a way to deal with _that_.

...without going too close to Scrapyard, because she could not afford to lose her powers right now. The range of the power-nullifier he'd been given was about a hundred and fifty feet. It only nullified active effects within ten, but since Rebecca's powers were all centred on herself, it was 100% effective on her at maximum range. Bah.

Best to move swiftly, then.

It was harder than it looked to snatch someone off their feet mid-flight. Go too slow and they had the opportunity to resist or shout a warning. Go too fast and you ran the risk of pulling their arm out of its socket. Then there was the proper trajectory to think about, so that you could continue in one smooth motion and be far away before anyone reacted. _Then_ there was where to hold them – Rebecca didn't have to worry about her grip slipping, but you couldn't hold someone by the neck and whip them through the sky, and holding them by the ankle, while effective for intimidation, wasn't a very practical way of talking to someone. Fortunately, Rebecca was very good at these kind of calculations, and had a lot of practice besides.

Fuse was plucked off the bottom of the gangway like a fish from a stream, and Rebecca had him two hundred feet in the air before he had time to scream, her arms wrapped firmly around his waist and her face pressed against his back. He smelt of smoke, obviously, and sweat, which was just gross. He was also beating her as hard as he could with all four limbs, but he might as well have been punching the ship.

With a bit of wrangling, she managed to get him in a sort of loose full nelson, being very careful not to snap his neck forward. Super-strength made wrestling easy, but only if you didn't care about killing your opponent.

"Hi!" she said brightly to the back of his head. "So, tell me about the docks burning down in 24 hours, huh?"

* * *

Tony Mancini heard more gunfire and sighed. What on Earth was Fuse doing? He was usually more reliable than this. Tony drummed his fingers on one of the radar displays for a second in annoyance, signet rings tapping on the glass. Hmph. It looked like if you needed a job done right, you had to do it yourself.

Pulling a handgun from his jacket, Tony opened the door and strode out onto the upper deck and past the gangway, so he could get a good view of the jetty.

It _was_ Scrapyard. Tony had never heard of the guy until a week ago, and he hated him already. He seemed to take actual pleasure in turning Tony's life into shit and fucking up his operations. At the moment he was just a figure on the jetty in the distance, but, come on, who else was seven feet tall and could stroll along like there wasn't a fucking football team's worth of Tony's guys trying to fill him with lead? This was the first of the _Santa Ferrero_ 's deliveries since Tony had taken charge of the dock area, and he just _knew_ that asshole would be here, just like he'd been at the weapons handover, and just like he'd been at the cartel meeting.

A guy who could degrade metal was pure shit to have on a boat, and Tony had had to supply a new one to the cartel along with an apology. There was _no_ way Scrapyard could be allowed onto the _Santa Ferrero_.

Fortunately, Tony's power had a fair bit of range on it. He pointed his gun, and took aim.

When he fired, Scrapyard stumbled back under the assault, and Tony smiled.


	7. Chapter 7 - Attrition

When Rebecca felt that Fuse had calmed down enough, she landed on the roof of one of those new blocky buildings and shoved him against the wall. She held back _a lot_ , but it was still plenty hard. Fuse hit and almost bounced off, but managed to hold himself upright against the concrete, breathing heavily. Rebecca stood in front of him, just out of arm's reach, her stance carefully casual. Projecting strength and confidence was good, but it wouldn't do to look like you were wide open to a surprise attack.

"Okay, we're on the ground. Or, uh, roof," she said. "You can stop screaming now."

Mid-air interrogations looked really cool, but they tended not to get very _useful_ information out of crooks. They _were_ a great point to start off, though, since the bad guy was generally so grateful for being back on terra firma that the hard part was getting them to shut up.

Of course, there were always the difficult ones.

Fuse's hat had come off mid-air, revealing close-cropped light brown hair. A military cut, fitting with the way he'd acted among the mafia enforcers earlier, although the stubble on his chin said he wasn't serving any longer. He straightened himself up and glared at Rebecca, although she could see he wasn't moving without pain.

"Who in the fuck are you supposed to be?" he asked.

"I'm… new. And invincible. That's all you need to know, I think. Now, tell me what's happening here tonight and maybe I can deliver you to the police relatively intact."

Fuse shook his head. "No-one's invincible, kid. Everyone's got a weak spot, even if you haven't found yours yet. For example, I've found that most things _burn._ " Without warning, he thrust his hands forward, and a cone of fire enveloped Rebecca's head.

… honestly, it wasn't anything to write home about. More a candle flame than a bonfire. Even if she wasn't invincible, Rebecca thought she might have avoided anything worse than a bad sunburn. Admittedly, it probably would have been a bit distracting, and most people would have instinctively flinched from the light and heat. So she wasn't surprised that Fuse took to opportunity to take a swing at her face while she was dazzled.

Rebecca felt something crunch against her cheekbone. Metacarpals, probably. When she could see again, Fuse was cradling his hand and glaring at her.

"Yeah," she said. "Wasn't kidding about being invincible. Probably worth a check though, so good job!" She gave the man an encouraging thumbs-up.

Fuse cursed under his breath, and shoved his uninjured hand into his pocket. "Fuck. Fuckin' shitty power. You know how lucky you are? If I'd had the ability to take hits like that, maybe I could have avoided this whole fuckin' mess in the first place."

Rebecca raised an eyebrow, but Fuse didn't elaborate. Instead, she said, "Yeah, I was gonna say, you're like the weakest parahuman I ever heard of. How hot can you go, like a thousand degrees? Less? Almost nothing, taking the conductivity of air into account."

"Shit, I don't bother with all that stuff. Who cares, am I right?"

"Who indeed. I'm going to ask again. What's the mafia planning for the docks?"

Fuse flexed his fingers, and winced. He wasn't looking at Rebecca, and hadn't shown any sign he'd heard the question. After a moment, he muttered, "Ah, man, hate having to do this left-handed… awkward." He wiggled his fingers a little more, and said, more to himself than to Rebecca, "Definitely broken. Shit, how long do those take to heal?"

Rebecca stepped forward. "I said-"

Fuse moved. Almost as soon as she got within a couple of metres, his left hand came out of his pocket clutching a handful of- ash? Ash. He swept in in a loose arc in front of him, throwing most of it at Rebecca. It covered her hoodie and jeans in grey streaks, stuck to her face, and some even found its way inside her blouse. Unpleasant, and weird.

Fuse snapped his fingers, and the ash burst into flame.

Hotter. _Much_ hotter. If his flames before had been like standing next to an open oven door, this was like pressing your bare skin into the metal. Even the little specks that had fallen to the floor were creating heat hazes in the air, and there was more than a speck on Rebecca's clothes. But Rebecca wouldn't be hurt by this much, not even close. She knew the heat was there, had the sense of it, but she wasn't burning.

Her clothes, on the other hand, definitely _were_. Rebecca wouldn't die of exposure any more than she'd burn, but there were secret identities to consider. Also, um, being naked was kinda embarrassing. So she brushed herself off as quick as possible without taking off her head-concealing hoodie, shaking her blouse out awkwardly to try and dislodge what ash she could and pat out what she couldn't.

Fuse was laughing, taking Rebecca's reaction as a sign that he'd managed to hurt her. Well. He'd certainly _annoyed_ her, at any rate. Enough was enough. Still slightly smoking from a dozen little points inside her clothes, Rebecca lunged forward and pinned Fuse against the wall with one hand. His eyes were wide with shock at seeing her without a scratch, and his feet dangled a foot off the floor.

"Nice try, but, again, invincible. Turn it off before you regret it."

Fuse coughed, and struggled weakly against Rebecca's hold. "Doesn't work that way, bitch. I don't control any flames except the originals, except to maybe choose when they start. Speaking of, fuck _you_."

Rebecca had removed _most_ of the ash Fuse had thrown at her, but at this point her clothes themselves had burnt enough to leave ash of their own. At Fuse's words, they didn't reignite.

They freaking _exploded_.

The sudden rush of heat was as far beyond the first iteration of ash as that was above Fuse's direct fire. The displaced air ruffled her hair, and the air grew thin. If this kept up, she wouldn't be able to breathe.

As soon as she processed _that_ thought, Rebecca grabbed Fuse by the collar and rocketed upwards just slow enough to avoid giving him whiplash. The wind stripped most of the blazing ash off her, but the odd spark still clung in folds and tucks. But Rebecca wasn't paying attention to the heat, or even really to her clothes any more.

When Rebecca focused more on the mental aspect to her power, the world sometimes seemed to freeze. The past, recalled in perfect detail, met the calculated structure of the future in a single timeless instant. The struggling form of Fuse, hand rummaging in his pocket for (presumably) more ash, seemed unimportant, as Rebecca's attention roamed.

A series of snapshot images presented themselves for her inspection. Fuse, walking round the docks with his lit cigar. Fuse, pausing to ash that cigar at seemingly random places, but never near where the mafia were guarding. Not random – the offices and warehouses of those shipping companies where the influence of the Dockworkers' Association was strongest. Fuse, reigniting his own ash with a finger-snap.

The consequences played out as clearly as if she was watching them happen. With a thought, Fuse would ignite the docks, and the flames would quickly spread to destroy almost everywhere the union had a foothold. Hundreds of people, mostly those prone to standing up for themselves, would lose their jobs, either permanently or at the very least while the shipping companies recovered from the loss of infrastructure and business.

The companies would be fine, though. They were insured, and what was more, they would find a certain family-owned conglomerate more than willing to buy them out to keep them from going under. Regeneration work would go quickly and smoothly, almost as though someone in city hall was pushing for the docks to be back online as soon as possible. The workers would mostly get hired back, albeit under punishing contracts, lower pay, and no guarantee of job security.

A snap of Fuse's fingers, and the Mafia would own the Brockton Bay docks outright.

"Ah, shit," Rebecca said. She noticed Fuse was still going for his pockets. Reaching out with her free hand, she seized his wrist and twisted it. Ash blew away in the wind. "Right, that's enough of that. Now. The docks. I imagine if I kill you they still burn down?"

"Get the fuck off of me!"

Body language was pretty easy to read when people's emotions were this strong. "That's a yes. Dammit. The 'fuse' is a lasting effect, then, not an active one on your part. Interesting. Out of curiosity, what's the time limit on that?"

"Let me go, bitch!"

"You know, everyone says that whenever I do this. I'd make the obvious joke, but at this point I don't think either of us would find it funny. Instead I'll just say that if I see flames where you've got your fuses set up, I will drop you. Believe me, I know exactly how high I'd need to take you to make sure you die. Setting them off isn't in your best interest."

Fuse paled. Maybe he'd seen in her face she was serious. "Hey, no fair. Look, I won't set them off, I promise, but you gotta believe me, once my flames turn to ash it's gonna go off within twenty-four hours no matter what. Chance gets higher as time goes on, and I can set it off any time before that, but within a day the ash starts a flame hotter than the one it came from, guaranteed. Ain't nothing I can do about it! You can't drop me for something I ain't got no control over!"

"Can't I?"

She couldn't. Summary execution wasn't something she did lightly, and Fuse wasn't _directly_ threatening anyone's life at the moment.

On the other hand, she couldn't exactly leave him. Rebecca could deal with the ash, now that she knew what she was looking for – starving it of air should work, and if not then placing it in one of Danny's nullification fields _definitely_ should. If she really booked it, she shouldn't take all that long about it, either. The problem was that once Fuse's life wasn't in danger any more, she had no doubts about how long his promise not to set the ash off would last, and she needed all the time she could get to deal with what he'd already set up. Especially if there was a time limit on it.

Two years ago, she'd have considered knocking him out… but unless you hit hard enough to cause brain damage, that gave you five minutes at the _very_ most. Not enough.

The obvious solution, if the problem was Fuse potentially using his powers to trigger the fires, was to stop him using his powers. The problem with _that_ was that Rebecca had, of course, left her own power-jammer behind, or else she wouldn't be flying around all invincible like this in the first place. Worse, even if she had a spare, she couldn't exactly leave one on him for the police to find. If she let one of Danny's prize inventions fall into the hands of the rightful authorities (shock, horror), he'd never forgive her.

Neither could she take him back to the union office, where there were more than enough power-jammers lying around. Even if the mafia was apparently interested in putting pressure on the Dockworkers Association, there was such a thing as giving the game away.

No, the solution to _this_ problem…

The sounds of a brawl made their way up to her ears. Scrapyard's laughter mingled with the mafia's cries of pain, set to a background of blunt impacts. Gunshots rang out every so often, but Rebecca knew that wouldn't stop the supervillain. Rebecca sometimes wondered how Danny couldn't see Scrapyard for what he was, but her boss insisted on trusting the psychopath.

Trusting him with a power-jammer, even.

Now, of course, Rebecca couldn't enter Scrapyard's nullification field herself. Not while carrying Fuse, at any rate – even if Fuse lost his powers as well that still left physically-sixteen Rebecca to fight a hardened criminal on her own. Nope, bad plan.

Fortunately, gravity.

"Okay," Rebecca said, coming to her decision. "First, I'm going to have to take your powers from you for a bit, 'kay?" She laid her free hand directly over Fuse's forehead and squeezed lightly before letting go.

"Wha- you can't do that. That's not-"

"Next – hey Fuse, remember how I said I knew exactly how high I needed to drop you from to kill you?"

Fuse looked terrified, but said nothing and nodded.

"This is not that height." She let go.

There was a second where the mafia cape seemed to hang in the air, as though he'd developed flight of his own. Then he began to accelerate downwards, nine point eight one metres per second per second, which would have him landing right around-

"AAARGH!"

On his feet, actually, although his legs buckled quickly. They might have broken, Rebecca couldn't tell from this distance. Still, from the noises Fuse was making he was certainly alive. Yay!

He was also squarely within Scrapyard's field of influence – well, Scrapyard's power-jammer's field, anyway. Not actually in sight of that madman, because if Rebecca wanted Fuse dead there were kinder ways to do it. Instead she'd dropped him between two buildings, close to where the brawl was going on but far enough that Fuse wouldn't be getting involved. The range on Danny's devices was large enough for that, just about.

With luck, Fuse would try his powers once or twice, see that they didn't work, and then give up before Scrapyard beat up the Mafia and moved on. Given what Rebecca had said to him, he'd just assume it was another of her powers and not even try to figure out what was going on. Which left Rebecca free to call Danny and get him to take power-jammers round to every location Fuse had marked. Between her, Danny and Kenny, plus anyone else they could round up, the ash could be neutralised in about ten minutes.

Humming, Rebecca flew off to find the nearest phone booth.

* * *

The police weren't keeping George in a cell, thank God, but he was still locked in one of their interrogation rooms when I got there. It was too small, and lit only by a single bare lightbulb. In the corner, a security camera blinked at us. I resisted the urge to flip it off, because the cop escorting me in probably wouldn't be too impressed.

George's eyes lit up when I came through the door. "Danny!"

I laid a hand on his and gave it a squeeze. "Hey, George. Listen, I'm real sorry about your bar."

Guys like George didn't cry, especially not where anyone could see. Still, I guess he really needed someone to just tell him they knew he was hurting, because I could see his tough-guy mask start to crack. So I got real interested in the door for a moment while he took some time for himself, and tried not to punch the cop behind me when I heard a snort. When George had calmed down, I opened up my briefcase (God, I was the kind of guy who had a briefcase now) and laid some forms and files down on the table.

"Okay, George. Look, I'm just here on behalf of Kenny to say that the Dockworkers Association has your back on this. We're not about to let you down after you've been here for us all these years. So we're going to put you in touch with a lawyer, OK? It's a firm we've used before, good guys, we know them-"

"Hold, up, Danny. I already got a lawyer."

I paused, mid-spiel, and looked at George. He gave me a watery smile.

"You do? Rebecca didn't mention anything about that."

"Yeah. It was right after she called, this guy comes in and says he represents an investor that's taken a personal interest in my case or something. Beats the fuck outta me, but I'm not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth, right? I'm just happy to have my bar back again."

This wasn't making sense at all. "You're getting your bar _back_? Not just the charges dropped, you're getting a replacement?"

"Well, not so much, but a pretty fuckin' hefty loan to get me back on my feet. And I know what you're thinking, but the lawyer guy walked me through the contract, line by line – there's nothing shady about it. No huge interest hikes, no hidden clauses saying I gotta give over rights to the place, nothing. It's not a free lunch, but it's a hell of a lot better than nothing." George grinned. "They're just hammering out the details about dropping the charges now, which is why I'm still here, but this guy's slick, Danny."

I grasped for words for a moment. "I, uh. Well, I'm happy for you, George. Really, I am. Hell, I guess you don't need me here after all, huh?"

"Not as it turned out. But listen, kid. It means something that you came. I haven't seen a friendly face all day, no-one who gets it. The lawyer's a goddamn life saver, but it's just another case to him. He doesn't know what that bar means to me like you do. So I'm glad you came, really. Hey, pass on the good news to all the guys, willya? Tell 'em _Neptune's Beer's_ gonna be back, better than ever!"

I smiled, despite my misgivings. "Will do, George. Hey, you wouldn't know where this lawyer is now, would you? I need to, uh, thank him myself."

The cop that had escorted me in decided to accompany me on my way through the police precinct to meet this mysterious lawyer. It was probably just standard practice not to have anyone unaccompanied on the premises, but I couldn't help feeling a bit paranoid as he led me through twisting corridors and into an open-plan office. Part of it was just natural distrust of cops, understandable enough. Partly, though, it was that I'd been associating with a notorious supervillain lately. It felt like every cop we passed could see it written on my forehead.

"Jeez, Mr Hebert, lighten up," my escort said. "We're not gonna bite. We're just regular folks doing a job like you." He noticed something up ahead. "Well, not all of us, I guess."

I looked. My stomach dropped. Oh, this was not what I needed.

Canvas, one of the city's two heroic capes, was not twenty paces from where we were, chatting merrily with a pair of cops. She had her face obscured by what looked like a mask, of course, but unless there was another petite woman in her early twenties going round in the classic skintight superhero getup, then this was Canvas. For now, her costume was the exact shades of blue and white as the cops' uniforms, and her chin-length hair was a deep navy.

At the moment, she was discussing what looked like a photograph of a mean-looking guy, but which had apparently been printed directly onto the cop's desk. On closer inspection, it was moving, pulling mean faces and sneering when no-one was looking at it. Her power, pulling up an image from her head and projecting it straight onto the surface.

On paper, Canvas' powers weren't that impressive. She could control the reflective, absorptive, and refractive optical indices of any matter within sensory range, whether that be sight or hearing or touch. Put simply, she changed the colours of things.

All types of things. There was a trend with capes that they affected either living or non-living matter, but not both at once. To take specific examples, Sever could deactivate the nervous systems of people in a given range around him, but couldn't do anything to the electrical system of a computer. Solvent could change water into acid and control it, but not the water inside the human body. (Not that that helped his victims at all.)

Canvas was different. Her powers worked on anything, including people and including herself. What could have been a fairly useless power became a very tricky one to beat, as her opening move in a confrontation was generally to target the general area around her opponents' heads and turn it pitch black, resulting in a small amount of black 'smoke' and a drug dealer or ganster who looked like they'd been squirted with ink… and whose corneas had turned opaque.

I'd never seen her at work before, but the whole city was generally aware of what she did day-to-day. She was a bit like a local celebrity, I guess, her and Freezethaw: the two heroic capes of Brockton Bay.

Well, plus me now, on the quiet. And Rebecca, whatever her power was.

"Just in here, Mr Hebert." The cop opened a door to a side office. Boy, was I glad the cops had taken any suspicious-looking items off me before allowing me into the precinct. My power-jammer was currently locked in a safe downstairs. The last thing I needed was to get on the radar of the local heroes, and someone who used their power as reflexively as Canvas would notice when it stopped working immediately.

At the time I'd been livid, of course. I came in on official business, a briefcase and everything, and they frisk me like I'm a common criminal? I mean, I guess I couldn't blame them for keeping their security. But I bet this lawyer guy hadn't been frisked. Maybe I should have worn a suit, if I could stand to see myself in the mirror.

The cop was talking. "-from the Dockworker's Association. Mr Hebert, this is Jeffrey Mansbridge, the lawyer who's taken on Mr Ferris' case."

I shook Mansbridge's hand. He was younger than I'd expected – early forties, probably. Short, but then lots of people were short compared to me. He looked like he kept himself in shape, though. Probably wasn't that hard, when you could afford high-quality food all the time and had a membership to a private gym. If he said something about valuing his health more than his material possessions I wouldn't be responsible for my actions.

Maybe I was just bitter, though. His briefcase was nicer than mine.

"Good to meet you, Mr Hebert," Mansbridge said. "It's actually lucky you came. You work for the Dockworker's Association, I understand?"

"That's right," I said cautiously.

"Excellent. I'm not sure what Mr Ferris has told you, but my employer is helping him out with his little legal problem, and we've also offered him a small loan to help him though the tough times ahead."

I nodded. "Very nice of him, I'm sure," I said, neutrally. It might have come out suspicious anyway.

Mansbridge laughed. "Yes, well, as I'm sure you've guessed my employer is not doing this out of the goodness of his heart. For a start, we've offered fair terms to Mr Ferris for the repayment of his loan, fair for him and for us. We do stand to make a little money out of this deal."

"But it's not just that." It wasn't a question.

"Indeed not, Mr Hebert. Indeed not. No, my employer is a man who believes in the value of community. The bar in question was a vital gathering place for the dockworkers, was it not? The damage to morale caused by its loss could be considerable, and that damage is measured in real money. My employer, quite apart from the sentimental reasons for helping Mr Ferris out, has high hopes for the docks and for Brockton Bay in general, and this is part of his way of helping to make that happen. As it happens, I think we'll be seeing a lot of each other in future – as I said, it was lucky that you came down today."

So this Mansbridge's employer had an interest in the business of the docks? Given my recent problems with the mafia, this was worrying. Burning down a building only to buy it back and capitalise on the land wasn't exactly unheard of for organised crime groups. And when the local community was beginning to organise to push out unwanted business influence, like the Dockworkers Association had started (and Scrapyard was pushing), well… Mansbridge wasn't wrong about the damage losing a community centre could do to morale.

The Mafia. Again.

I had a feeling I'd just be stonewalled if I tried to investigate further, but I asked anyway. "So, does this mysterious employer of yours have a name? If he's being so generous, I suppose I'll have to send him an official thank-you letter or something on behalf of the Association." I could almost hear the lawyer's reply before it came. _Oh no, Mr Hebert, my employer wishes to remain anonymous, and conveniently unconnected to any major crimes that might be run from the docks over the next few years, ha ha._

"Of course." He seemed to notice my expression of surprise, and chuckled again. "Really, Mr Hebert, not all of us 'corporate types' have something to hide. I suppose it's my fault for not introducing myself properly at the start.

"I work for the pharmaceutical company Medhall, and for its owner and CEO in particular. When I talk about my employer, I'm talking about Richard Anders."

* * *

 _What a pain,_ mused Tony Mancini. _Even wounded, Scrapyard's taking far too long to beat_. The pain-in-the-ass vigilante was down on one knee, and breathing hard, but he wasn't out of the fight by a long shot.

Technically, of course, Tony wasn't in the fight either, instead standing on the deck of the _Santa Fererro_ instead of down on the jetty where the action was. Still, he'd caused most of the damage to Scrapyard so far. Where the fuck was Fuse? The last Tony had seen, his enforcer had been heading out to fight, but there was no sign of him now. Had he gotten lost or something?

Tony's guys circled Scrapyard. There was a distinct lack of willingness to go near the man, which probably had something to do with the groaning messes left in his wake. Shooting him didn't work, Tony had learned _that_ by now. The only other option was to go toe-to-toe with a guy who not only shrugged off the hardest of punches like he'd been hit with a pillow, but could lift a grown man in one hand into the bargain. As options went, it wasn't the best.

It would also help if Tony's own powers weren't on the fritz for some reason. It was like he couldn't do anything in an area around Scrapyard, every time he tried he just got shut down. Was power-cancelling yet another of Scrapyard's powers? How many did this asshole have? Still, that was no reason to give up. Instead, Tony had just had to work a bit more indirectly.

One of Tony's men plucked up the courage to rush in and swung a piece of two-by-four at Scrapyard's skull. Wood worked well against him – sure, he could turn it to metal and _then_ degrade it, but you could get at least a couple of good hits in.

The blow connected, and Scapyard staggered, almost falling. At the last second he caught himself, and swept his arm across to block the second hit. The two-by-four went flying. Scrapyard's other fist lashed out and caught Tony's man on the knee. He didn't get up in time. Tony crossed himself and muttered a quick prayer, and tried to remember if the guy had had any family.

But he had at least left Scrapyard open. Tony concentrated, and felt a connection form. One of the rings on his hand, and the two-by-four, now lying on the jetty.

When he swiped his hand to the side, as fast as he could manage, the plank moved in exactly the same direction, at exactly the same speed. These days, Tony was good at judging things like relative directions. Side effect of his powers, or just trial and error, he didn't know, but he tended to hit what he aimed at when he did stuff like this. He released his control at exactly the moment his hand was moving fastest, and the two-by-four struck Scrapyard in the throat.

This time, the vigilante _did_ fall, clutching at his neck and gasping for breath. Tony's men rushed him at that, kicking and punching and hitting for all they were worth. Give Scrapyard his due though, he still managed to wrestle his way to his feet and rush to escape, shaking grown men off his back like they were children.

Tony allowed himself a smile. Connection: the bullet in his gun, and a concrete breeze block from a stack in one of the repair workshops. He aimed his gun somewhere off to the side, and when he felt the vectors align, he fired.

Scrapyard went down, and lay still. Blood trickled from a cut in his forehead, leaking onto the shattered concrete.

The men attacking him moved quickly. By the time Tony had made his way over, Scrapyard was bound with heavy rope, blindfolded, and frisked for any weapons or drugs, not that Tony really expected him to have either.

To his surprise, one of his enforcers held up some kind of small electronic device. "He was carrying this, sir. Had something similar attached to the back of his neck, same kind of design but different purpose."

Connection, ring on his hand and the limpet-shaped device… nothing. As though he didn't have powers at all.

"Huh," said the new most dangerous cape in the country. "How interesting."


End file.
